


The Road to Budapest

by Arisusan



Series: The Road [1]
Category: D. Gray-man
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Canon, Backstory, Friendship, Gen, Somewhat canon compliant - is unlikely but not impossible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 40,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arisusan/pseuds/Arisusan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Multiple finders disappear near a small village in Hungary, and a group of four exorcists are dispatched to solve the problem. Among these are Daisya Barry and Yuu Kanda, whose stories continue far beyond the precipitating event, and, for better or worse, are the same for quite some time. This chronicles the road that ends in Barcelona for one, and in Bodrum for the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Road to Budapest: Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from ff.net. I started that copy a while ago, so it's got a few more chapters posted. If you want more or, like me, prefer the formatting over there, wander over. As in the original notes, I've only edited this once, so it's very rough. I probably won't edit it again if left to my own devices, so please review. I beg you, even if it's just to point out a typo.

Daisya gulped down the last of his soup, setting the bowl back on the empty tray with a clunk. Subconsciously, he began eyeing the half-eaten remnants on the tray opposite him. The old man's meeting would probably last for a while. After all, it had to be important if it took precedence over lunchtime.

He glanced around, reached forward, but clenched his fingers in midair.

The old man would probably show up the moment he grabbed for it. He had a nasty habit of having perfect timing.

He retracted his hand, and tried to fold a paper crane out of his napkin. It didn't work, but it killed time.

That was the thing about the Order. Say what you like, it was pretty hard to get suicidally bored. It was a bit boring, but Daisya could get bored in the middle of a sports match. As long as it wasn't soccer, that is. So, the fact that boredom was a temporary thing here said a lot.

He gave up on the crane and started on a candle. He could make those reliably.

He folded the cloth into a triangle, then flipped it over and folded the top down.

The one annoying thing about the Order was that there weren't so many kids. I mean, the old man's nice, and Marie's pretty cool, but he's basically a grown-up.

There were a few others, but they were few and far between, and most of them were pretty boring people. All they every talked about was how they wanted to go home.

Even if Daisya ended up half-dead at the order, he was never going home. Home was nice for a few weeks. After that it was Hell.

Though, he thought in annoyance, this is a house of God, and I shouldn't be thinking like this. Yadda yadda yadda.

There were exorcists. There were akuma. But God was a bit of an iffy topic.

He heaved a sigh, and turned the candle into a hat.

"Daisya…"

Daisya's fingers twitched, and the hat-soon-to-be-a-boat collapsed. The old man made no noise at all when he walked. It was a bit creepy when you weren't expecting it.

The hat reformed itself before Daisya turned around.

Well.

"Ah, I see I have some soup left. You have managed to restrain yourself yet again. This is Kanda, by the way. He was an apprentice of mine before you joined the Order."

The old man had a bored-looking kid in tow.

"He's about your age, and he's been assigned to us. Now–"

"Does he talk a lot?" interrupted Daisya. Who cared about details — if he was going to have to spend his time with a chatterbox, he wanted to know in advance.

The old man gave him a look that was not so much angry as tired.

"I was about to say, he's a bit shy. Anyhow–"

"Is he boring, then?"

The old man sighed. "Daisya, it's very rude to talk about someone in front of them."

Daisya shrugged, and turned towards Kanda. Were it not for the general's words, he might have thought he was a girl, with long hair and a slight build.

"Are you boring, then? Also, do you talk too much? Everyone always used to say my brother was shy, but he never shut up at home."

The kid called Kanda's expression slid from one of disinterest to one of contempt.

"It's your choice."

"Okay."

Daisya turned back to the general.

"So why's he here?"

"I was telling you before you so rudely interrupted," said the general, straightening his glasses.

"Sorry."

Daisha's voice sounded insincere, as with everything, but it was the thought that counted.

"You are — yes, despite your love for football — in need of training, and the Order believes that you would benefit more from training with someone your own age."

Tiedoll looked tired, as if he was anticipating resistance.

"Okay."

Daisya shrugged, and turned back to the hat. It wasn't really worth fighting over, and besides…

…Kanda was different, so that meant he was interesting.

"And there's another exorcist, Noise Marie, who'll be joining us as an extra pair of hands. He used to be one of my students, like you."

The hat turned into a boat.

"Yep."

Hmm. The blind kid and this new one.

Could be interesting.

…

"Daisya…" began the general.

Oh, no, now he's bringing out the mom voice.

"I know, I should try and be nice to the new kid," said Daisya, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

"Daisya, how many times do I have to tell you not to interrupt?"

Daisya had the grace to look a bit embarrassed.

"A bunch."

"Someday, I know you'll listen to me. What I was about to say was: Kanda is not an average child. You would do well to watch him."

"Sounds interesting."

General Tiedoll seemed a bit preoccupied as he went on.

"Daisya, I've heard that you haven't quite gotten along with some of the others here, so I'd like you to try a bit harder with Kanda."

Daisya nodded, and his expression retained its typical air of aloof confidence for a moment.

Then he grinned.

"Sure."

The general nodded contentedly.

"Hmm, that's good," he said thoughtfully, "I was expecting a bit more resistance, though, as you aren't so fond of the other children."

Daisya shrugged.

"They're all the same. They want to go home, they want to be my friend, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know what Kanda's thinking."

He finished a scribble on a piece of paper, narrowing his eyes in co concentration.

"And I want to find out. I'm going to find out."

Tiedoll noticed the hungry expression on his apprentice's face. He hadn't been this excited since he became an exorcist.

Though, from what he'd guessed of the horrors Kanda had faced, Daisya might find the challenge a bit too steep even for him.

Daisya had finished another scribble, and had rotated the paper to give more room. He had some natural talent, but even he had said that the only reason for the manic doodling in his free time was as an amusement.

Tiedoll wondered how Daisya had lasted as long as he did in his village without spontaneously combusting from the tedium.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blah blah blah, please read and review, etc., whatever. Basically, if someone's ooc, please tell me, because that is the greatest crime of fanfic. Actually, it's second to incomprehensible writing. Just review, if you please.
> 
> Anyway...

"Do either of you play football?" asked Daisya through a mouthful of scrambled eggs, "No one here seems to like it."

He finished the eggs in record time, moving on to the stack of pancakes on the other side, spraying crumbs across the table as the other three sitting there attempted to finish their first meal a bit more daintily.

"I don't really like sports," said the blind kid — Marie, who was sitting beside Tiedoll, facing Kanda.

Well, 'kid' was a bit of a misnomer, but Daisya had picked up a habit of calling everyone under the age of 25 'kid'.

"Your loss then."

He finished the pancakes, and swept his knife and fork around to four o' clock on the plate.

"What about you?"

The question was addressed to the kid beside him, who had spent most of the meal leaning away in distaste.

"I don't play sports. They're a waste of time."

Daisya raised his eyebrows.

"Wow, your lives must be boring. Do you even know how to play?"

"I think there'll be time to play later," interjected Tiedoll, noticing the unnaturally calm expression that had plastered itself on to Kanda's face, "But for now we should probably get going. An assignment's come up in Hungary, so we'll only have a few days to get ready."

The news seemed to fit its purpose — Daisya brightened up a bit, and Kanda had regained his look of mild disgust. Kanda was an odd one — he had been a somewhat civil apprentice, and treated Marie with deference, but was contemptuous towards almost all others.

"There have been a few odd occurrences near the border with Romania — ghosts, disappearances, the usual — but there were too many of them in one place. The finders there seemed to suffer the same fate almost immediately, and we're the largest group of exorcists that can be sent out as a unit, now that Kanda and Marie had joined us."

"That's convenient," said Kanda, unable to keep his voice clean of disdain, "Seems we won't have time to play football, thankfully."

Daisya absentmindedly rapped his knuckles with the spoon he was twiddling.

"Didn't your mother tell you not to be petty?"

Kanda appeared to freeze for a moment, then smiled.

"Daisya–!"

The general's reproach was cut short with two purposeful clinks of metal on china.

Marie pushed his chair back, and collected his dishes. He was already pushing 6'5", and for all his blindness his stare held a certain hold over the two children opposite him.

"If that is the case, I think I'll need some time to prepare. It's best to get an early start."

Tiedoll nodded, and made a note to himself that it was probably best to seat Kanda and Daisya kitty-corner from one another in the future.

"My thoughts exactly," he added, shooting a 'you'll get a scolding later' look at Daisya. He had assumed the kid would get better, but his behaviour continually straddled the line between chatterbox and egomaniac. Even Kanda had been more manageable, if initially cold.

But, he remembered, that wasn't all there was.

And maybe he'd been a bit too strict lately, but Daisya would have to grow up quickly to survive in the Order.

For the moment, he had but one hope, and it was that both his apprentices would survive both each others' attacks —

— and those of the akuma. Kanda was competent, but his shaky regard of his own life left him vulnerable.

They may have been children, but they were also exorcists. Travelling in a pack could only help so much. In as little as a few years, they would fight alone.

His job was to keep them both alive until then.

…

"…how can you not like football? I mean, I bet that brat doesn't even know how to play! I'll teach him — like, literally, I'm going to have to teach them both, and it's always really annoying because then you have to know the rules really well and…"

Daisya chattered on as he muscled his sleeping roll into a cylinder. A simple task, but he simply lacked the body mass to do it. Nonetheless, it had probably been a therapeutic half-hour for him.

General Tiedoll, meanwhile, took the post of the sensible adult of the duo — that is, packing everything Daisya had forgotten under the set of drawers, and trying to fit his own belongings in the same bag.

He'd hoped Daisya would have tired of his quest by now, but a few arbitrations on his (and twice that on Marie's, so he'd heard) had showed him that the journey was going to be a long one.

Oh, well. At least the time period between fights was getting marginally longer. Just a few hours ago Kanda had agreed to a game of hearts.

Daisya had then proceeded to go on a tangent about the scoring, which Kanda turned into a jab at football, which then escalated from there.

For all his maturity towards adults, Kanda had little patience for children his own age.

Or maybe not so surprisingly. He had only matured because he had no other choice, so it was to be expected that he lapsed a bit in a new situation.

Daisya was a borderline example, as he had a self-centred thought process without the subtlety to blunt it. He had no fear of consequences, however rational. No fear of scolding, no fear of pain, and Tiedoll suspected his addiction to adrenaline would nullify even a fear of death.

Fear is a healthy thing, and Tiedoll would soon find out that not one but both of his apprentices were starving for it.

…

"…that brat is just so utterly obsessed with that stupid sport of his."

Marie dutifully chalked the utterance up as the nineteenth in twenty-five minutes.

He did agree, of course, but Kanda should have figured it out by now.

Now, let's see, the drawers felt empty, he'd swept out under the bed, and he could hear any dampening when he tapped on the ground. Thankfully, Kanda grasped the concept of 'packing' far better than others his age.

Though, from his experiences, Kanda would have needed to grow up. Marie didn't like to think about what he must have gone through, but the fact was unavoidable that Kanda had seen far too much of death.

He hadn't told Tiedoll yet, but he had been told to keep an eye on Kanda. The Order hoped to nullify some of his more unpredictable traits by pairing him with a kid as brash as Daisya.

Had Marie been able to see, he would have glanced up at Kanda, and attempted to read his expressions. This was the most Kanda had spoken in a while. Instead, he settled for picking out the nuances in his voice.

"…what's the point of kicking a ball? It's useless…"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is our mantra? Read and review, read and review, read and review. A bit of criticism is infinitely more helpful than a kudos. That being said, thank you all quite a lot for the kudos that were given, which, while neither helpful nor unhelpful, were good for boosting the motivation of the writer.
> 
> Again, if you want more, the version on ff.net is about six chapters ahead, so head on over there.

"There are so many trees here."

Daisya trudged along, staring sideways into the woods. His footsteps had begun to drag, after the first few kilometres. He was counting down the minutes until they reached the railway station.

"Really."

Kanda's sardonic tone was not missed as a constant foil to Daisya's wonderings, but Tiedoll had decided to let them go on for a few more weeks. Maybe they'd see eye to eye on something. Eventually. Perhaps.

"I was born on the Mediterranean, ya know. Nothing but rocks for miles. Trees were something you saw in books."

Kanda opened his mouth to retort, but paused oddly.

"…well, there are this many trees. And a lot more."

His tone was deprecating, but more irritated than contemptuous. Hardly an improvement, at any rate.

Silence reigned again for a few minutes, before falling victim to a coup headed by Kanda, of all people.

"The trees here are nice because they keep the paths sheltered."

Daisya nodded, falling back slightly to where Kanda was walking.

"Yeah. Back home the forests were all made of skinny trees, and there was nothing to protect you from the sun."

Kanda glanced up briefly at the darkening sky. Sun wouldn't be an issue for the next few hours.

"And what about the rain?"

"Oh," said Daisya with a hint of the odd pride everyone has for home, no matter how much they hate it, "It never rained. We could barely grow anything, which is why there were always so many people in the trade district."

"Hmm."

Marie quickened his pace slightly to bring himself in line with the two children.

"I remember, where I was born, there were mostly trees and mountains. They built castles up there; they said it was because it was so beautiful…"

General Tiedoll kept his pace steady at the head of the party, listening to Marie's attempt to continue the conversation. Maybe there was a hope of peace, if only in the odd conversation.

Kanda had added something inaudible, and when Daisya next spoke his words had the edge of a giggle in them.

The remaining hour or so seemed to go a bit more quickly.

…

The forest faded into grassland, and houses started appearing on the hills. By this time, the conversation had faded, but not before visiting the topics of tourists, sunshine, and the relative benefits of eating salad. Marie kept most of the conversations going, to Tiedoll's surprise, while Daisya talked a lot about each subject, saying nothing much all the while.

At long last, city crawled out to meet them, and the train station's wrought iron gates rose up in front of them. The next half an hour was mostly uneventful, marked only by Daisya's dancing too close to the edge of the platform, Tiedoll's advice to get off there, and Kanda's glare.

…

"How long's the train ride?" asked Daisya, sliding along the bench.

General Tiedoll stowed a briefcase in the overhead compartment, and sat down opposite his charge. The brief conversation while walking hadn't changed his mind about separating his students.

"It should be about five hours. The Order is quite isolated."

"You're telling me. It seemed even longer when we were going there."

Daisya turned to look out the window, then swung his head back around to look out the doorframe. Someone had made a noise.

Kanda walked in through the doorway, tightening the final knot in his hair tie.

"I don't remember the journey to the Order. It's probably not much," he said, sitting on the edge of the bench, next to Tiedoll.

"Seemed pretty long to me," Daisya added, but he left it there.

Heavier footsteps padded outside the compartment, and Marie appeared through the doorframe.

"I think that's the last of the luggage," he said, taking a place next to Daisya.

"Do you remember your journey to the Order?" asked Tiedoll, wanting to continue the conversation. Now that the four of them were seated and staying still — well, Daisya was staying in one place, at least — there was the chance that some peace might be reached.

Marie's eyes looked up unconsciously, as if reading from a mental cue card.

"I think it was when I was eleven," he said slowly, "I don't know what it looked like, obviously, but I do remember that it was a long way uphill."

The general chuckled. "Ah, yes, I do remember that from my first journey, and from every one after that. It's hard on the knees, isn't it?"

Daisya, for his part, nodded emphatically, choosing to stay silent for once.

In the few moments that followed, there was the sound of bustling outside the window, as the last few passengers boarded.

Tiedoll rested his hands on the table in the centre of the compartment.

"Well, we have plenty of time to kill, now. Perhaps a card game?"

Daisya shrugged.

"Maybe, but it'll get boring after half an hour, unless you know something more complicated than hearts."

Kanda nodded. He had already crossed his arms and slumped back on the bench, in the traditional position of the apathetic.

"I don't like to say it, but I agree with Daisya."

Marie shrugged. "It would still pass some time, depending on the game. General?"

Tiedoll's customary smile broadened, and he straightened his taped-up glasses.

"There's one I don't believe I've taught either of you yet. Have any of you heard of five hundred?"

The other three shook their heads.

"Okay. It'll take some time to learn, but the games can go on for a while, so it should keep us amused. All right. So, you play the game in partners with the person kitty-corner to you. That means I'm with Marie, and Kanda and Daisya are together…"

For a brief mental pause, Tiedoll debated the wisdom of switching partners, but decided that Daisya and Kanda were better off not facing one another.

"…and that also means that you have to play both your hand and your partner's hand. The first team that gets five hundred points wins."

About fifteen minutes later, after a detailed explanation and a practice trick, the game commenced. Four exorcists playing a card game require a far grander word than 'started'.

"Hmm."

Tiedoll looked at his cards. Jack of hearts, very good, a few low hearts, ace and king of spades, a few high-ish diamonds and the queen of clubs. Not bad, but nothing to bid on.

He cast a glance over at Marie, who was still running his fingers over the cards.

"Six diamonds."

The bid cycled clockwise to Daisya, who was staring at his own cards, but also sending the occasional look to Kanda, as if trying to communicate something.

"Pa-ass…"

He enunciated the word lightly.

Marie's turn.

"Seven diamonds."

His voice held a note of doubt; perhaps an indication that he was relying somewhat on Tiedoll's hand. The best part of five hundred was watching your opponents trying to communicate, and the most difficult part was attempting to communicate within your own team.

Kanda, for his part, was taking his time deciding.

Eventually, after glancing up at Daisya, he spoke.

"Seven hearts."

He sat back, and an uncharacteristic smile passed over his face.

"Pass."

It was probably best to let the kids have it this time, to let them learn. Also, if Marie's hand was nothing to write home about, there was a better chance of them losing compared to his chance at winning.

Now, Daisya's turn. Judging from the look on Kanda's face, he should probably go eight hearts.

At least, if Kanda was trying to encourage him. But Kanda's smile was a critically endangered species, and there was a certain glassiness to his eyes.

Perhaps a bit of reverse psychology?

"Pass."

Daisya sat back, and grinned.

Hmm. Now, he may have been perceptive, or he may have just been trying to annoy Kanda.

Against previous evidence, Tiedoll thought it could actually be the former.

"Pass."

Marie's final statement left the bid to Kanda, who quickly picked up the kitty, shuffled it into his hand, and discarded three cards.

Let the game begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five hundred is a card game I learned from my father, who came from New Zealand (apparently the game is played down there far more than up here). It's a bit like bridge, but simpler, and it mostly relies on mind-reading abilities to make an interesting game. It's fun to play, but hard to explain. A brief breakdown of the most important aspect is as follows: tricks are bid upon, like in bridge, and the team that wins the bidding must win a certain number of tricks with a certain trump suit. There are two teams of two, and each team plays as one entity. Thus, each person only knows half of the team hand, and must guess the other half, or use ESP. In addition, if a team wins the necessary tricks, they get a certain amount of points. If they lose, they lose the amount of points. First to 500 wins, or alternately, first to -500 loses.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is far from stellar, but bear with me. There's a small chance it could get better. Also, misspellings when talking about the mugs are intentional, and Daisya and Kanda's OOC moments are as well, to account for the awkwardness of having to put up with a stranger. Don't get too excited -- I'm only updating this fast because about 15k of this is available elsewhere. Once this copy catches up to the on on ff.net, I'll probably slow down to the same pace for both. Reviews are greatly appreciated, though kudos are nice too.

Marie neatly laid the ace of clubs on the two previous cards, before play passed to Kanda. The kids had four tricks, and they had three. One more trick, and the game would tip permanently in the favour of the adults.

Kanda, for his part, made quite a show of staring at his cards.

He looked up at Daisya, who was employing a carefully blank expression, and then back down at his cards.

Let's see…

He selected the five of hearts, and played it.

General Tiedoll couldn't help but sigh dramatically. He was not, as a rule, competitive, but it was always good to put on a show.

Also, he'd been certain that Kanda had at least one club left.

Daisya gleefully collected the trick, stacking it with the others, and waited as the cards were played. The queen of hearts was Kanda's offering.

The old man topped it with the jack, but that was nothing to worry about.

Showtime, as it were.

He selected the card he'd been saving. The picture looked a bit like him, with bells and painted-on tears.

Funny. He looked the part, even though he didn't act like it. It was worth a try.

He placed the joker on the trick, relished the impressed look on the old man's face, and waited until the trick ran out. Hah, looks like Kanda was pretty good at guessing what he had.

Or maybe he just took a risk, but he didn't seem like he'd do that.

He played the ten of diamonds. If he was correct, Kanda had either really low cards or the ace, and Marie would have the king.

King, ace, queen.

Another trick won, and then another, and then another. Game over.

Tiedoll smiled in mock chagrin.

"I must say I was sure that Marie had the joker."

Kanda shrugged a reply, and narrowed his eyes in Daisya's direction.

"It was obvious. Daisya can't hide his cards."

"To each their own," said Marie diplomatically, cutting of Daisya, "My favourite method is to draw out the higher cards, and then use trumps."

Daisya's face had by then lost its brief flash of anger, but a hint of annoyancewas still threaded into his voice when he laughed, and said:

"Well, I don't really care what I do. If I'm bored, I'll just change it."

He collected the cards together, and started to shuffle them, grinning at the uniform noise as they hit the table, and then collapsed back into place. He carefully laid a card down at each place, leaving three in the middle.

The quartet picked up their cards, and examined them again.

"Pass."

"Six clubs."

Daisya and Marie had a quick time deciding what to do, but Kanda took longer, staring intently at his hand.

"Looks like your hand isn't that boring," said Daisya after a few seconds, "You going to bid?"

Kanda managed to give the impression of eye rolling without moving a muscle.

"Yes, if you'd shut up. 'Boring' is subjective. Which means most of what you say is bu– nonsense."

He bit down on the syllable after he remembered his company, but he was sure Daisya had gotten the message.

"Six no trump."

Daisya glanced over at Tiedoll as he made his decision, then back at his own hand.

"Actually, you're pretty wrong about that. Boring things are boring because I think they're boring. You don't care about boring or not boring, and no one else here does, so what I say is 'boring' is the only definition that counts, because it's the only one that exists."

There was a clacking noise as Tiedoll straightened his cards on the table.

"Seven clubs, I think."

A few passes later, the kitty was Tiedoll's.

…

The game went on for a few hours, until Marie suggested that the game could also be ended by one team having -500 points, and thus losing. Daisya and Kanda, for all their gritted teeth and enmity, lost only by a hand or two.

"Two hours left."

Kanda's expression had already frozen.

Daisya stuck a closed fist out in front of him, and started at his fingers.

"So all we've got left is this train ride…"

He extended a finger.

"…the ferry, another train, then we have to walk for a bit, then another train…"

He stuck out another fist.

"…another ferry, then a train, then some walking, and then we're there. Plenty of time to get to know each other."

"Joy."

Kanda didn't even move his eyes, keeping them fixed on the wall.

"I think we may have the opportunity to play more card games in the future," said Marie, with the hint of a smile.

"It's either that or word games," added Tiedoll.

"Or we could just shut up and wait."

"Yeah, but that gets boring."

"So do card games."

"Yeah, but are a lot of card games. There aren't any things you can change about being quiet."

"Let me guess: it's boring."

Daisya grinned glassily, but there wasn't much humour in his expression. He tried sarcasm.

"Gosh, I'm amazed you can tell. You should be a psychic."

"Shut up."

Surprisingly, Daisya did so, but his look of annoyance didn't vanish.

A few minutes later, he piped up again.

"Say, Marie, are there any games you know?"

Marie head the almost inaudible sigh from Kanda, and decided to answer the question despite his down dislike of chatter.

"Well, there's always 'think pink,' but I remember my music teacher used to play a guessing game to see how well we knew the notes."

Daisya leaned forward in his seat, balancing the extra weight on his hands.

"Oh, so, you hum a note, and then you guess which one it is?"

"Yes, essentially."

"That's cool."

He grinned slightly, and chuckled. He seemed to do that quite a bit, Marie had noted. Though, whether there was any meaning to it was a different question. Kanda sighed quietly in exasperation as much as he talked, but that was just a filler noise in his vocabulary.

The rest of the train ride was, oddly, filled with mostly silence. There was the occasional chuckle from Daisya, presumably because he'd just thought of something funny, and the constant counterpoint of exasperated noises. Marie had no concept of a visual glare, but he could sense that Kanda would probably be employing one along with its auditory equivalent.

...

The train eventually pulled up to the station, and the disembarking unfolded with a normality one might not expect of exorcists. A family of four — father, older brother, and younger twins — shuffled along, one of the twins skipping gleefully ahead, the other crossing his arms and shadowing his older sibling.

They shuffled through the port with their baggage, and boarded the ferry in fairly short order. Hungary was quite a trip away, so the more time that could be saved, the better.

The ferry ride passed in the same silence, punctuated again by twin sound effects, and eventually the family ended up in a town called Calais.

"Marie and I are just going to find somewhere to stay," said the father to the twins, "So would you two mind staying with the bags for now?"

The skipping twin opened his mouth to speak, but was forestalled by a defense from the father.

"We'll move more quickly without the bags, and the sooner we find someplace, the sooner we can rest. You know that. Just don't wander off, Daisya."

"Yep," said the twin in a bored voice.

The two children sat down on a bench, an array of backpacks forming a barrier between them. In parallel, they stared out at the square, watching the cross-eyed pigeons waddling over the paving stones.

...

"I was going to say that I could go with them," said Daisya dryly, "But I'm sure you're happy I got to say."

He glanced over at Kanda, whose omnipresent glare contrasted with his wry grin.

"Shut up."

Daisya swayed forwards and backwards, pushing off from his hands.

"You know, you've gotta get a bit more creative with the words you use. I mean, it's so boring saying shut up all the time. You could tell me to stuff a sock in it, to see my lips shut, to cease conversation, but you always say shut up."

"Shut up."

"See? It's boring when it's always the same."

"Then shut up before I cut your tongue off and feed it to the pigeons."

Daisya smiled brightly.

"See? That's better! If you keep doing that, I might actually listen."

In front of them, a squabble broke out over the discarded corner of a sausage roll.

Daisya turned to the bags beside him, and rummaged through one of the smaller backpacks, sticking his arm up to the elbow in it. A few seconds passed before his face lit up, and he pulled out a small cylinder, about a centimetre and a half thick and twenty centimetres long.

He carefully untied the twine around it, and rolled out the piece of paper and pencil.

Kanda, in equal parts disdain and confusion, watched as he began to cover the paper with a series of clumsy sketches and abstract shapes, barely visible because of the thinness of the lines.

"Like my drawings?" asked Daisya after a few seconds. He didn't take his eyes off the paper, but Kanda got the feeling he had shifted his focus to him.

"If I said they're bad it would be a compliment."

"In which case, thanks bunches."

"It's 'thanks a bunch'."

"No, I said what I meant."

"Whatever."

Kanda recrossed his arms, and swept his eyes around the square. Nothing much. A bakery — the source of the sausage roll — a couple of souvenir shops, a fruit stand. Typical of a port town, with plenty of people passing through and desperately in need of a cracked mug with 'wordl's best mum' on them.

He doubted they made 'world's best excorsist' mugs. There was too small a market.

Speaking of which…

Exorcists were always in short supply. There was no logic to sending four on a run-of-the-mill mission.

Sure, the finders had lost contact, but even then, he and Marie could have handled it. Or the General, regardless of Daisya's presence. He himself, even. Exorcists started early.

Daisya probably would have been with him anyway. He was like a whining puppy, trailing after the General and biting the hem of his robe. Pathetic. He had never been like that.

He had been more angry.

And now he was angry, that here was another useless brat without any concept of the magnitude of being an exorcist. A load for them all to bear.

He had never been like that.

There was the dry sound of rustling paper as Daisya presumably rolled the pencil back up in its blanket, tying it neatly.

Kanda stole a glance, and saw him sitting straight, and staring blankly ahead. Occasionally, he would sway, or let a flash of an expression cross his face.

"How much does it take to kill an akuma?"

The question hung in the air for a moment before Kanda snapped out of his own reverie.

"How should I know? You just kill it."

"That's interesting. Well, I guess it probably depends on the akuma."

There was an irritated noise from Kanda.

"Does it even matter?"

"Dunno. So I know what to do when I need to kill one."

"You've really never killed one before?"

Kanda turned again to face Daisya, and Daisya shrugged, returning the gaze.

"A few, but I don't know how strong the old man is compared to other exorcists, it doesn't help."

Kanda's glare slid from disbelieving back to exasperated.

"So you've spent the past five minutes making up a fight?"

"Yep," said Daisya, grinning.

Kanda had only noticed now, but there was always an edge to Daisya's smiles. Something hungry, as if he was trying to be in control.

He turned back to the pigeons, and slouched against the stack of backpacks.

"Let me guess: you're bored."

"Y–"

"Don't bother answering."

"Didn't know I was that depressing to be around," said Daisya, in tones of mock wonder.

"You're exhausting."

"Well, you haven't told me to shut up yet, so it looks like you're warming up to me."

"If that ever happens, it'll be the day Hell freezes over."

"Well, then, looks like we'll both be headed for a nice, frosty afterlife."

Kanda analyzed the sentence for a minute, then turned to Daisya in a cold rage.

"What the hell–"

"Boys! There you are."

General Tiedoll, accompanied by the soft footsteps of Marie, materialized from an alley behind them.

"We've found someplace with quite a lovely view of the harbour. I think I might even have to paint it, once we get there. What do you say we go over there and have some dinner? Tomorrow will be rather long."

Kanda mellowed his expression significantly before answering.

"So long as it's someplace quiet."

"Very well."

Daisya had already hopped up with his own pack, and so passed Marie's and Tiedoll's to them as Kanda shouldered his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hear ye, hear ye, a new chapter will be on its way, but reviews and/or kudos and/or feedback of some sort will expedite it. A hint: if you wish to leave chapter-specific kudos, a review is a handy way to do so. No matter how incompetent they are, writers are, after all, attention whores.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, another chapter with approximately 4.00 x 10^8 paragraph breaks; weird, list-like introspection; really short paragraphs; borderline inexplicable actions; and other writing quirks I am unable to rid myself of. I beseech my readers, review, or else you shall be forever subjected to the idiosyncrasies of my writing style.

The inn in question, as it were, was seven minutes or so south of the port, perched up on the edge of the sea. After a meal drawn out by Tiedoll's questions about the architecture, the four exorcists found themselves split between two rooms.

Daisya curled up beneath his blankets, wearing his coat over his pyjamas. It would be a while before he got used to the chill of a northern climate.

"I do hope Kanda hasn't been too…abrasive," mused the old man from the other side of the room, "He does have some difficulty with kids his own age."

If there was one thing the old man was, it was predictable. Daisya decided which lie to use, and chose a more neutral one.

"He's been okay. He just doesn't talk much. It's a bit boring."

"Oh, I'm glad," said the old man, sounding relieved, "I know that a lot of the Order hold him at arms' length. It really isn't any good for him, so I'm happy you can understand."

"Mmm."

Daisya stared at the wall, eyes drifting over the pattern of knotholes in the wooden paneling.

"He just seems…"

What was the word. Lifeless, pushy, hungry?

"…tired."

Tired. Yeah, that was the word for him. Not tired as in 'oh dear I haven't slept in a day and my eye just started twitching and did you see that elephant cycle past,' but tired as in 'existence is a trial.'

He pushed, and when you pushed back, he kept pushing until you backed down. His own surrender was never an option.

"Yes. Hmm, that is a good word to use. He has lived through many things, and now he is tired…"

The warm, dry tones of the old man's voice wore on as Daisya came to his own conclusions. In the dusty recesses of his skull, he pulled out a checklist, and crossed off the first bullet point as ineffective. Kanda didn't have enough of a sense of humour for that to work.

Time, now, to try a more neutral approach. Well, what other people thought was nice, at least.

...

The sun had just barely come up when Daisya was woken by a bell. Not his own, but a shrill noise echoing up the stairs.

He groaned, and sat up.

"What time's it?"

"Six bells."

The old man's cheery voice came from near the door. He was already up and dressed.

"How do you even get up this early?" murmured Daisya, half to himself.

"Well, the view from here is just so beautiful, I couldn't help but want to watch the sunrise. I would have woken you, but I thought you might not appreciate it so much."

Daisya had gotten up, picked his shirt off the floor, and pulled it over his head. Then he realized he hadn't taken off his coat or pyjamas yet. Then he remembered that the old man had said something.

"Oh, thanks. How'd it look?"

"Lovely, thank you. I managed to fish out my pastels in time to make a sketch."

After a few false starts, Daisya finally managed to button up his coat over his clothes, not the other way around.

"That's good."

He pulled on one boot, stamping down on the thick leather.

"Uh, General?"

"Yes?"

The old man looked over at him from the door.

"Is there anything Kanda actually likes to do? Whenever we do something, he complains."

The old man chuckled.

"He does like to do that. He's quite fond of arguing, too. There isn't a good way to put it, but I don't think Kanda likes much in particular, nor does he hate anything. The complaining is more of a habit."

Having finally tied a tight enough knot in his laces, Daisya followed the old man downstairs.

"So it's like Marie not saying much, but the opposite?"

"Yes. It isn't too much reflection of his own feelings. That's why the two of them get along so well."

Daisya smiled.

"Yeah. I was wondering about that."

The only other free room had been at the opposite corner of the inn, so Kanda and Marie were already waiting for them.

"Were either of you up to see the sunrise?" asked Tiedoll, pulling up a chair, "It was beautiful."

"I imagine so," said Marie diplomatically. Sometimes it took the General a few moments to catch up to himself.

"Oh, more's the pity. I must say, I have a soft spot for coastlines."

The table subsided back into the vague silence of the half-asleep.

"I'll get some breakfast," mumbled Kanda.

"I can go w—"

"No."

Daisya shrugged, and leaned back in his seat. The time for playing the joker had passed, having not worked.

"Well, while we're waiting for breakfast, I think I'll check up on our situation."

The general pushed his chair back from the table, and wandered over to the telephone in the corner, leaving Marie and Daisya sitting in an awkward silence.

"So today we've got to take the train up north, and then we're going south on the ferry?" he asked, trying to start a conversation.

"Almost," said Marie helpfully, "We need to take the train east to the Black Forest, and then we board the ferry. It will be a few days before we arrive there."

Daisya tried to visualize the journey.

"So, if we're here…"

He tapped a knothole on the table.

"…and we're going here…"

He tapped about a foot away from it, at a spot slightly closer to him.

"…then we need to go here."

He traced a dotted, somewhat diagonal line halfway, then drew a more level line to his second hand.

Marie thought for a few seconds about the patterns of of the sound, and nodded.

"Roughly. Do you like geography? Not many people bother to memorize it."

Marie attempted to continue the conversation, despite his tendency to silence and the occasional twanging of his patience when Daisya talked too much.

A rustling of cloth against wood indicated that the child had shrugged in reply.

"We had a few maps in the shop, so I read them when there was nothing else to do. It's not too hard to memorize stuff when you've been staring at it for years. Do you like it? The maps must be impossible to read."

Marie nodded amicably.

"Most, yes, but there are some in Braille that I can read."

"Braille? Is that the writing with dots?"

"Yes. It's the alphabet for the blind. But in most cases, my hearing is sufficient."

Daisya grinned, and Marie could hear it in his voice.

"Cool."

Kanda returned to the table, balancing four plates on a tray. He glared slightly at Daisya offering a hand, then passed the plates around the table.

"Where's the General?" he asked quietly, hopping back into his seat. The chairs around the table were closer to barstools than proper chairs, necessitating the undignified movement.

"He's phoning headquarters for updates," said Daisya cheerfully, "Thanks for the food, by the way."

A confused glare should be an impossibility, but Kanda managed it.

The three of them started to dig into the food. Continental breakfasts weren't as substantial as the ones at headquarters, but enough hot chocolate fixed anything.

"Anyway, it looks like we're heading for Germany today."

"Tell me something I don't know," muttered Kanda through a mouthful of croissant.

"We are heading for a location near the source of the Danube river in the Black Forest," Marie said, piping up if it were possible with the pitch of his voice.

"Mmm. And then from there to Budapest?"

"And from there to our destination."

The two settled back into silence, and Daisya wondered how that came about. He'd seen Kanda a couple of times, but he yelled at most all the kids except the little Chinese girl who they said refused to synchronize.

Maybe he liked her because she went through the same ordeal, or something. It would take a lot for him to like someone.

So where did Marie fit in?

Maybe a friendly mentor, or maybe someone he knew before…whatever it was had happened. Because something had definitely happened. People are born mostly blank. The world is mostly arbitrary. Anything good, bad, or otherwise was mixed up inextricably with everything else. Kanda was oddly and remarkably pure, then, compared to the rest of the world. The anger that exuded from him wasn't affected by any emotion he was feeling — it was part of his being.

It was beautiful, in a way.

But he could never have been born like that.

Something had happened.

Daisya's thoughts were interrupted by footsteps that should have had the certain bounce in them unique to the old man.

But his footsteps were flat.

"The second team of finders just got wiped out, so we'll have to hurry," he said calmly, "If we catch the six forty-five train, we can make it to the river in half the time, so eat up."

He pulled up a chair, and began to eat with an unusual speed.

Two teams gone. Wow.

The finders were interesting. For one, they were always too cheerful for people whose lives were just an extended suicide mission. Who'd want to do that?

Then again, Daisya hadn't been at the Order long, but normally one team of finders could hold their ground for weeks.

No wonder they sent four exorcists.

But then, why was he there? Kanda had no motivation, which itself was motivation. He would carry out any task asked of him by virtue of having little to fight for or against. Marie was a prodigy. Blind and able to outdo most sighted exorcists in precision, and the ideal teammate for any more combat-oriented fighter. The General was the General. He had survived decades, even when most of his students hadn't. He was one of the most powerful exorcists in the world.

And then there was him. Daisya Barry. Age eleven. Soccer fanatic. The Barry kids' weird older brother.

But now he was an exorcist. The latest of General Tiedoll's line of students.

And yet, he was again relegated to the odd one out.

A trio of family, and their hanger-on.

Oh, well. At least these ones weren't annoying.

Despite the feeling of uselessness, this world was so much better like this.

He ran a finger around the edge of the plate absently. Maybe that was why the finders stayed.

...

A few minutes later, the four were walking at a good clip east towards the train station in an odd silence. Daisya had decided against humming a tune. Kanda would probably prefer he didn't.

Why was he doing this?

He was going through a checklist of attitudes, using each of them to try and put together a picture of Kanda.

But why? He had one already, and it was wrong to treat humans like that.

Like what?

Like animals, to test for traits. Like characters in a book.

But how else could he have done things?

He could have treated Kanda like he normally would. But that wouldn't have been good anyway. Aggression worked on most people, but for those who were a bit harder, well, he just ignored them. But here he was, without a wish or a heartbeat or anything to make him want to have anything to do with Kanda except for burning curiosity.

He himself didn't even act like a kid, but — no, he did. Just not in the right way.

He liked the General. Far more than his own family, far more than anything.

Alone, above everything. No one else at the Order quite accepted what they saw as well as he did.

Marie was nice enough — they'd talked once, and he'd played a card game with Kanda as a participant.

In his world, that counted practically as friendship.

It was odd — it wasn't as if he was a loner. He was perfectly sociable.

It's just that there weren't many people that made him feel happy by their very existence.

There was the old man.

He was that person.

And then there was the idea of football, oddly enough. A game with the precedence of a soul. It was energetic, and cunning, with a wicked grin on its face as it passed the ball behind it without looking away.

That idea, and a kindly old man who hadn't found his mistake yet.

The railway station loomed up ahead, beautiful in its ornate wrought-iron façade and fleur-de-lis-tipped gates.

It was half past six in the morning; the sun gleamed off the windows of the town.

And the air was cold with silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vote General Tiedoll for best and weirdest dad, June 2015. As for an explanation, Daisya is basically approaching Kanda like a human that's only ever met dogs would approach a cat. I.e. using a bunch of different, equally ineffective methods that only end up making the cat hiss, and go somewhere else. Stay tuned. On a happier note, while I have no comments and very few hits, I have roughly one kudos for every 2 hits, which is one of the better ratios I've seen. Thank you for that.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, five chapters and there are still no comments. If this keeps up I may be forced to post a cliffhanger and not update until one of you says something. Not that there are many of you readers -- my hits number is half that of debatably-written crossover porn -- but the three of you who are here seem to enjoy this, as I've got about two kudos for each three hits. That's a damn good ratio, in comparison to everything else, but PLEASE. COMMENT. Even with kudos, it feels like I'm shouting into the void. Which is fine, as voids are very good active listeners, but nonetheless.
> 
> In the words of Shia Laboeuf, JUST. DO IT.

"What the hell is with that kid?" Kanda murmured, attempting to shove his backpack into the storage compartment. It was amazing how they expected two bags, let alone four, to fit there.

He tried shutting the door on it, but it wouldn't close properly. Time for desperate measures.

"What do you mean?" Marie asked cautiously., "He seems normal, though he is loud."

He was just standing by quietly. At least he had the grace not to try and help Kanda.

"Have you seen him? He's acting creepy. He's not even like that. He's just acting. I can't get a grip on him."

Kanda threw himself at the compartment once again, pushing in the bags and hearing the catch of the lock.

"That should be good."

He turned back to Marie, who seemed to be turning something over in his mind.

"Hmm. Perhaps he really is like that."

"No. He's just his own world. So self-centred he can even think about other people as people."

Odd words for an eleven-year-old, thought Marie. Then again…

Kanda was both younger and far older than that.

He followed Kanda back to the compartment.

…

"Daisya…"

"Hmm?"

Daisya looked up from his sketches, and felt his heart sink. The old man had a concerned look on his face.

"You've been acting quite oddly for the past few days."

"Yeah?"

The old man looked unsure of what to say.

"Is it about Kanda?"

"No, not really. I'm still working on him."

"I'm not entirely sure that that's not the problem, then."

The old man sighed, and Daisya felt it would be a good idea to pay attention. He sometimes ran out of patience. Once every three months, about.

"It's probably best if you treat him like just another person. He isn't any good at working with other people, so it's not very much use trying to crack him. It's just who he is. It's actually rather cute, sometimes, but don't tell him I said that."

The words 'Kanda' and 'cute' were irreconcilable in Daisya's mind, but he nodded.

"So, just go through the normal rounds?"

"Yes. Maybe a bit like what you did with me, after you stopped thinking I was leading you on, though you may suffer slightly heavier consequences if you bother him enough."

"So, you don't mind if I don't get along with him?"

The old man looked a bit taken aback.

"No, not really. Why? Were you trying to?"

Daisya shrugged as he did when avoiding a question. He had a different repertoire of shrugs depending on the occasion, Tiedoll had noticed over the months.

"Sort of. I figured you'd like it better if we didn't fight."

The old man smiled, and Daisya attempted to become one with his chair. He was  _so_ embarrassing, sometimes.

"Oh, so that's why you were acting like that," he said, laughing slightly, "Good. I was worried for no reason, then. I must say, Daisya, you're also quite capable of being cute."

Daisya couldn't help but redden, and he looked away in annoyance.

"Yeah, no."

…

The game this time ended 480-360 to Tiedoll and Marie as the train pulled up somewhere in Alsace. It would be difficult to secure a seat on the next train, but the general had said he had a few ideas.

And so, yet again, the twins were left on opposite sides of a bench, arms crossed and alternately glaring and grinning.

"Say, that game's actually pretty interesting."

Daisya didn't bother trying to orchestrate a sentence that was clever or kind in some way. The old man's advice was probably the best he could get involving Kanda.

"You said that yesterday."

"Yup. But most things get boring after a few days."

"Boring's still subjective."

"I know. But I figured I might as well get the introductions over with."

Kanda glared askance at him.

"Well, I was sort of trying to see if you liked it if people were nice or whatever, but the old man said it was useless to try using that on you. So basically I'm introducing myself again."

Daisya shifted position, and stuck a hand out to the other side of the bench.

"I'm Daisya Barry. Ever played football?"

Kanda was fluent in a few languages and knew a few words in many more, which was why none of the locals recognized the exact meaning of his muttering.

Daisya did, though, and giggled.

…

"Why do they always leave us here?" muttered Kanda sullenly. After Daisya's little skit and a few sentences of one-sided conversation, he'd been trying to get some sleep.

"Maybe they want us to get to know each other."

"No way in hell."

"Oh, give us a chance," Daisya said dryly.

He exhaled, and looked up at the clouds. In the upper layers of the atmosphere, cirrus clouds hung like unfinished brush strokes. One of them looked a bit like a waterfall.

Eh, but those clouds were boring compared to the fluffy cumulus clouds, that could be anything from a shark to a lion.

"So, _do_ you know how to play football?"

Kanda let out a scoff.

"Why would I?"

"So you don't know."

"No."

"Hmm."

Daisya thought for a moment, then plunged his hand into his backpack. It was nice, not trying to be anything in particular, even though Kanda was a bit himself.

After some rummaging, he fished out the paper and pencil he liked to keep. The old man was happy that he liked drawing, so he always got a paper allowance.

"I could teach you."

He peeked over the backpacks at Kanda, who was looking as bored as he himself felt.

"Why would I want that?"

Kanda kept looking straight ahead.

"Well, it's either that or staying like this until the old man's found another train or a place to stay. And, if you get this over with now, then you won't have to deal with me later on."

Kanda's face looked curiously blank for a moment, then settled into a mask of exasperation.

"Fine."

Daisya grinned.

"All right!"

…

Marie walked back along the cobblestones, remembering the different patterns of paving slabs he had passed. He often wondered how he'd get by if he didn't have such a good memory.

Thankfully, that was rarely an issue.

Most people pitied him for his blindness, but he was rarely inconvenienced by it now. He could still see pictures, if only in his mind. He remembered the feelings of streets, he heard the echo of sounds off the figures around him, he felt the vibrations when akuma moved. He had no need of sight.

Though, on occasion, he did wonder what it would be like to see all the faces he had met since then.

As he came closer to the rendezvous point, he heard a chatter of voices he had not entirely expected.

"Okay, so, in a proper game, the offence can't go back behind the defense, and the defense can't go in front of the offence, which means you've got to rely on your teammates."

There was a light swishing noise, a pencil gliding across a piece of paper.

"And if it's not a proper game?"

"Well, you only play it like that if you've got a proper team, but if it's ever just us four the only rules we'll be playing with are the ones about kicking it out and stuff."

"You're acting like we're actually going to play."

"Hey, you can choose to do it, or I can choose for you."

Marie decided to interrupt before Daisya got carried away.

"Excuse me, Daisya."

There was a rustling of clothing as one of them presumably turned to face him.

"Found anything?"

Kanda was the first one to speak.

"There's one place we can stay, though the rooms are a bit small. Is the General back? We agreed to meet back here."

"Nah," said Daisya, "He should be back pretty soon, though. Say, you know how to play football? I'm teaching Kanda, so I should probably teach you while I'm at it."

Marie smiled. He agreed with the general — kids were rather cute when confronted with something they liked.

"I do know how to play it, yes, though it's been a while. I'll probably just listen to catch up on the rules."

There was a non-committal sound, and slight rustling of clothing that could be a shrug.

"Suit yourself."

Daisya turned back to his reluctant student.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like a filler chapter to waste time and increase word count. I have to say, I've got the athletic ability of a sick sea snail, so don't quote me on soccer rules. Most of the time I spent playing soccer back in the day was spent attempting to kick the ball just once, and later attempting to stay as far away from the offense players as possible. One soccer ball to the teeth was enough. Also, Daisya refers to it as 'football' because, as far as I can remember, most (if not all) of the European countries refer to it as football.
> 
> Anyhow, thanks for reading and kudos-ing and potentially commenting, and have a nice day.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a combination of wheedling and blackmail, I've finally coaxed a reviewer out of hiding, and I got far more than I was expecting. Instead of a one sentence 'don't abandon this because i can't get a date saturday night' I got a flatteringly complimentary review that specified the parts of the writing that said reviewer liked, which is the most useful form of feedback short of telling me where I went wrong. So a large and expressive thank you to NTLeo, who is single-handedly responsible for the update coming now as opposed to in a week (or when I remember to).

"Hah, look at that guy over there!"

Daisya pointed out of the train car window to a man wearing the traditional lederhosen of the area, ignoring the current conventions for suits and military wear.

Kanda surveyed the scene grimly, despite the pleasant aura cast by the setting sun.

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't you like to wear those?"

"I'd rather rip my own arm off."

Tiedoll of off making an arrangement for the compartment — they were difficult to get, but the post of exorcist held a certain weight — leaving Marie to supervise the kids. He'd apparently decided that they were now getting along.

Well, perhaps making peace to allow for mutually self-centred attitudes was a step up from the previous stage.

There was a leisurely sound from Daisya's end of the bench as he stretched, and a sound bordering on a hiss from Kanda.

"Don't touch me."

The voice held its normal timbre of contempt, despite Kanda's slightly more neutral attitude.

"Okay, okay."

Daisya responded with his customary teasing manner, just on the edge of annoying.

Marie remembered finding his story quite funny. That the kid who had the audacity to scrawl a smiley-face on Tiedoll's work would turn out to be an accommodator was a bit…hmm, ironic wasn't the word, but he couldn't come up with a better one at the moment. It had been hard to imagine a child could be so rude, but Daisya's actions did not disappoint.

Daisya heaved a sigh of boredom.

"Geez, where's that old man gotten to? We need to get going."

There was a grunt of annoyance.

"You'll be bored in five minutes even if he comes back, so be quiet."

"No, we can play another game when we've got four people."

Kanda made another exasperated noise.

"There are plenty of games you can be play with three people."

"Like what? Hearts?"

"What, are you stupid?"

There was the intake of breath that might otherwise have heralded a reply, but it was cut off.

"Don't answer that. Marie just told us about a couple a few days ago."

"Oh yeah," said Daisya, as recognition dawned, "We can get play that sound game, where you have to guess the note. That'll be fun."

He started to absentmindedly tap a pattern of beats on the bench. Sometimes his fingers had a life of their own.

"I didn't say we should do it," said Kanda angrily, "I was ju–"

"But we can still play a game," interrupted Daisya, "How about that, old man Marie?"

Marie ignored the slight, and weighed the options. It would pass time, and Kanda would likely stop grumbling after a few minutes. Also, Daisya wouldn't have the chance to create himself a monologue. A few minutes of variety wouldn't hurt.

"That sounds like a good idea."

…

General Tiedoll walked back to the compartment, mentally thanking both of his charges for building up his argumentative skills. If there was a young clerk or a bored assistant manning the counter, then bartering was simple. An old lady, though…

It was likely that many businesses owed most of their profits to a chain-smoking septuagenarian.

He heard an odd humming noise as he stood outside the door.

"Hmm."

He opened the door, and saw Kanda scowling in concentration.

"G flat…I think."

Daisya stopped humming.

"Yeah! You're actually not bad at this, Kanda."

"You sound surprised."

"Well, yeah. And Marie's way better than you."

Tiedoll took a seat next to the apparent master of the game.

"The note-guessing game, is it?"

"Yes," answered Marie quietly, as the scuffle continued across from them, "I did not anticipate the two of them knowing about music."

Tiedoll smiled.

"Well, I thought Yuu might like some calming piano training. And Daisya wouldn't leave me alone once he learned I could teach him. He's very persistent."

"They both are."

The ambient noise died down eventually, with Kanda and Daisya settling for their typical expressions of sullenness and arrogance.

"Shall we move on?" asked Tiedoll, "I have a note in mind."

A sharp, it turned out to be. Though many would argue that it was the same as B flat, the nuances in the voice can distinguish between the two. It's all in the resonance.

As it so happened, Tiedoll and Marie were the only ones capable of differentiating between the two, so they would easily have won the game had they been keeping track.

...

Sadly, before a victory could be accounted, the darkening sky had taken a hold on the passengers.

Tiedoll stood up quietly, and pulled the blankets from the overhead compartment.

"We're going to be travelling through the night," he advised, "So it would be best if everyone got some sleep while we can."

He tossed one over to Marie, and two to the kids. He would stay awake. The exorcist generals had a certain paranoia that enabled them to stay awake for quite a while. That, and one of the variety of mysterious pills made by the Order's infirmary staff. They were invaluable to most of the exorcist Generals.

To be precise, he'd had maybe two nights of sleep since leaving the Order, courtesy of Marie volunteering for the night shift. The kids needed their sleep. They were still growing, though Daisya had Yuu by a few inches already.

A few minutes later, Daisya was contentedly dozing off. He had the incredible ability to go to sleep anywhere, at any time. Tiedoll envied him a bit. Yuu and Marie were still awake, but he doubted it would be for long. The rocking motion of the train was somewhat soothing.

The sun set further and further below the horizon as forests of beech and spruce flew by outside the window. The south German mountains and spruce forests were a thing of beauty. Had there been time to spare, he would have liked to stop and paint them. Particularly they way they were now, at dusk.

The forested mountains were silhouetted black against the reddish clouds on the horizon, and clawed up as the sky faded from rose to dusky violet and eventually to a deep, dark blue.

Peaceful.

Many exorcists failed to see that the world was neither good nor evil. They saw it either as the birthplace of akuma or the work of a well-meaning God. There was good, and there was evil, but they were not intrinsic in the world. They were entirely human conventions, that were born and died within humanity.

The world, instead, held beauty and ugliness. Neither one was good or evil. And, indeed, he recorded both in his sketchbooks.

He heard the slight change of breathing in the cabin as Marie first, then Yuu fell asleep. Daisya had been out for a while, lucky kid.

The light behind the trees grew dusty, and faded.

As the train wound further up along the sides of the mountains, the moon became visible, climbing higher in the sky as the night wore on. A full moon, suitable for the peace of the occasion, and coloured a buttery yellow from the smoke of the mining towns.

Someone yawned quietly, and shifted position.

Tiedoll had spent countless nights awake, watching over his students. He had seen enough to know that someday, he would spend the night awake, watching as they only appeared to be sleeping, despite the utter, utter stillness of their bodies.

Marie had survived. But he was one of many.

Who had not.

It is the destiny of the child to watch the parent die.

He cast a glance over his students. Marie had curled up on himself, and leaned against the window. Across from them, Yuu and Daisya had slumped together in a heap, balancing on each others' shoulders.

It is the destiny of the master to watch his apprentices do the same.

...

The train pulled into the station sometime after four in the morning, when the horizon was stained lilac. Yuu and Marie woke up immediately, but Daisya remained fast asleep.

" _What_ –"

To forestall his yelling, Tiedoll placed a hand on Yuu's arm.

"Don't wake him up too roughly."

Kanda's face contorted into a grimace, and he attempted to push Daisya off of him as gently as possible. He wasn't too fond of loud noises, either.

"There's a ferry leaving at six that we can catch, so we have an hour or two to kill," said Tiedoll quietly.

There was a thunk as Daisya fell over on the bench, punctuating the early morning silence.

"Is it safe to wait at the port?" asked Marie, "Or has there been any abnormal activity in the area?"

"We should be safe here,"Tiedoll replied, "We can have a nap if we find a convenient bench."

Marie nodded.

"Yes, that would be good. But I think I should stay awake. You need your sleep, as does everyone else."

He gestured at Daisya, who was being prodded insistently by Kanda.

"Ah, thank you."

Tiedoll smiled to himself. His students never ceased to be cute. The ones that survived, at least.

The rest were ashes, though their named plaques lay in the rows upon rows of the Order 'cemetery'. He went by whenever he came back, scattering the scraps and cinders of sketches over the carved marble.

It was only right that as life died, beauty died with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found Marie and Tiedoll quite interesting to write, though it was a bit difficult. For Marie, I gave him a bit of a formal speaking style. He's about 21 in this, and I imagine him to have been a shy teenager, especially after learning about what Tiedoll accomplished when he wasn't training exorcists. Also, I tried to make the description in his part auditory, to give a picture similar to the one he saw, as it were, as opposed to a conventional one.
> 
> For Tiedoll, I referred to Kanda as 'Yuu' whenever the narrative was firmly from his perspective, and 'Kanda' when I was in doubt. I tried to write his character as benevolent, but practical. Because unnecessary angst would be dangerous to an exorcist General, I imagine he would be very good at getting over the loss of his students. Just going by the mortality rate of exorcists and some info I remembered, his only remaining students as of the latest chapters are Marie, Kanda, and Chaoji, so I thought he would think of the students he lost with kindness, but not with too much grief.
> 
> However, I think that not even the most experienced of exorcists can quite cut out the memories from their minds of what was, and how different it is from what now is.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, and thank you very much to NTLeo for reviewing the last chapter.
> 
> If I may go off on a tangent, this story was mainly inspired by the accidental worldbuilding the anime added in when they transitioned out of one filler arc and into Daisya's, using a character with a name and nothing else and giving him another small filler arc. However, in adding a few harmless lines of dialogue and a backstory, a few questions were inadvertently raised. Why did Kanda have to meet Daisya in a small, presumably German town instead of at headquarters? How did Daisya come to be less scared of Kanda than even Lavi? If he's known Kanda long enough to accurately read him (a difficult feat), then precisely how long has Daisya known Kanda and Marie, and why does Marie (the friendlier one) act more coldly (relatively) towards him than Kanda?
> 
> I wondered for a while particularly about why Kanda said to 'protect' or 'take care of' (dub and sub respectively) Daisya, which is uncharacteristic of him but not OOC, given the anime's more nuanced take on his (Kanda's) character - namely that, while he is irritable, angry, and bitter, he values life and will save whoever he can while incurring the fewest losses. Frankly, I prefer that version of Kanda to his character in the first 40-some chapters of DGM, where I find him to be little more than an angry piece of cardboard.
> 
> Either way, the purpose of this story is to create just one possible past that could have built up to Daisya's death without making Kanda a completely bastardized version of himself. That being said, his actions in the first section of this (named 'The Road to Budapest') he'll be a bit more emotional and more erratic, as he would have only been alive for two years, and the trauma of the incident with Alma would have a heavier effect on his actions. Also, this particular chapter features the whole gang operating on maybe three hours of sleep, so they're all acting a bit oddly.
> 
> So, if you'll pardon the background, continue as you were. I hope you read, enjoy, and review, hopefully in that order.

Marie relaxed, and opened his ears to the sounds of the port. Children crying, the urgent but comforting voices of parents, the flow of the river.

The heavy breathing of the three sleepers was a velvet texture on the edge of hearing, thankfully devoid of snoring. Marie had once had to switch finders and partners because of that. His sensitive hearing was as much a curse at times as it was a gift.

Time wore on, and the exact details of the mission remained opaque.

Why had the finders disappeared? Generally they were able to file a report before being offed by akuma.

Why was Kanda here with them? Why did he and Daisya need company? Exorcists younger than them had taken solo missions before, provided their finders were competent.

But there were no finders, and too many exorcists.

Perhaps it was a way to get them out of the Order's hair.

But that was irrelevant, at the moment, because beside him he could hear not one, now, but two higher-pitched rhythms of breath, calm for once in sleep.

That was what was important.

…

At the end of the day, the ferry had pulled into another port, and another two hours laid themselves out for the slaughter. They had to catch the train tonight.

The four travellers sat on their coats at the base of a wall, trying not to fall asleep, to a greater or lesser degree of success. Even Daisya had nothing to say, instead staring out at the street without even a disparaging laugh.

People passed in the fading sunlight, and the dull roar of the crowd a few streets over echoed off of the deserted stones of the alley. Marie picked out a woman complaining about the quality of bread, a child crying about a dropped toy, and a man attempting to calm down a frantic horse.

Clop, clack as the horse backed down.

And then, the strains of a fiddle on the edge of hearing, and tapping feet.

Daisya started, as if remembering something. Perhaps he'd passed from exhaustion into the destructive kind of energy brought on by going beyond being tired.

"Hey, Kanda, wanna kick the ball around a bit?"

"No."

"Because I really need some practice if we're going to run into akuma."

"Football has nothing to do with Innocence."

"Yeah, but it has got something to do with mine."

"Yeah, right."

Daisya laughed.

"Give me five seconds."

He turned over, and plunged his hand into one of the bags, eventually bringing out a small bell, a cage of metal around a small ball.

"This is it. Can only use it if I kick it."

Kanda stared for a moment, but didn't remain surprised for long. His expression hadn't even changed.

"That's pathetic."

Daisya tossed it up, and caught it, cutting off the ringing sound.

"So, what d'you say?"

"No."

Kanda hadn't even bothered to look at him, but Daisya's expression of mild amusement had already set.

"Think of it this way: I'm going to be useless if I don't get any practice. It's like you're training me. And I promise to go easy on ya."

Tiedoll took a moment to intervene. Though, whose side he was on was debatable.

"Daisya, Kanda doesn't nearly have the same experience with football. It's not very considerate to ask him to play against you now."

The statement was quiet and polite, and had exactly the effect it was intended to have. The General had not earned his ranking for his battle skill alone.

Kanda grumbled under his breath, and shot a heavier glare at Daisya.

" _Fine_."

…

"All right!"

Daisya laughed, and bounced the ball from one foot to another.

"That was sorta good, Kanda."

The shot in question had, completely by chance, ricocheted off a wall before hitting a crossbeam from a half-timber house at precisely the right angle to drive it straight down over Daisya's head. Kanda had been satisfied with that one.

Of course, Daisya had just stepped back and caught the ball on his knee, which made Kanda even more livid than before.

"That was useless," he said curtly, "If someone returns it like that, you're dead. Do it better this time."

"Yeah, yeah, but you can't say I'm not great at this."

Daisya kicked the ball up again, headed it, and whipped around in a roundhouse kick to drive it within a centimetre of Kanda's ear.

To Kanda's ever-increasing annoyance, Daisya was right.

…

At one point, Kanda managed to catch Daisya off guard, but that was the greatest of his successes.

The day after that, he achieved twice that.

The dust whipped up in the fading sunlight a third time, and then a fourth, killing time in the squares and side streets.

...

The inn they found a few days later should have been a nice, quiet place to get a rest. The wooden furniture was elegantly cut, if not carved, and the sheets were merely off-white instead of the usual suspicious yellow colour.

Instead, it was no less exciting than anywhere else.

Daisya's heels dug into the ground, but Kanda had firmly attached himself to the bedframe.

"No way, bastard! I haven't had a good sleep in days because of you!"

The protest would have been a roar if Kanda's face wasn't buried in the blankets.

"But Kanda, it's for your musical education," muttered Daisya through gritted teeth, "You'll enjoy it."

"No," snapped Kanda, "Go pester the old man."

Daisya let go for a moment, readjusted his grip on Kanda's ankles, and started pulling again before Kanda had a chance to kick.

"He's on the phone."

Kanda twisted to the side, almost knocking Daisya over. Geez, the kid was strong.

"Then ask Marie!"

"Nah, he'll just tell me to go to shut up."

"That's the point, imbecile!"

"Well, he's probably going to say the same to you with the racket you're making."

Kanda's momentary burst of angry, obscene indignation loosed his grip just enough for Daisya to separate him from the headboard. He hit the floor, curled up defensively by instinct, and tried to shake Daisya loose with a couple of kicks.

However, Daisya was expecting it, and pulled Kanda up by the shoulders, quickly getting him in a full Nelson. The kids in his village had been way more trouble than this.

"Hey, Marie! Kanda wants to go see the dancing. You want to come with us?"

His shout had no reply.

"Eh, he's probably somewhere else," he said to himself as Kanda shook him off.

He grabbed Kanda's hand before he had a chance to recover, and dragged him out the door.

…

Marie, as it turned out, was already leaning against the half-timber walls of the inn, listening to the music.

A vehement grumbling and annoying laughter alerted him to his company.

"So you were here, after all," said Daisya blithely.

"Yes, I heard the racket," Marie replied quietly, "But the music is good, so shut up before you ruin it."

Kanda was stewing with a bitter sort of fury, but Daisya's hand was around his wrist with his thumb on a pressure point, and Marie's comment stopped him just short making a scene.

"Hey, you wanna join them?"

Kanda kicked Daisya in the shins as he felt the brush of breath in his ear.

"No."

"Why not? You liked the note game, and dancing's fun, anyway."

"Shut up."

"Come on, just one song. Everyone's doing it."

"No."

"Aww."

Daisya looked at him with a mock-imploring gaze, then appeared to think of something.

"You at least know how to dance, don't you?"

"No, why the hell would I?"

Kanda glared as Daisya looked at him with disbelief.

"How can you not know how to dance? My sister knows how, and she's five! Just try tapping your foot to the beat, or something."

"No."

Daisya sighed.

"Spoilsport. Tell you what, I'll shut up when you ask me to until we get to Budapest."

"No."

The reply was automated, so Daisya tried again.

"I'll actually do it. How about that."

There was a brief moment of thought from Kanda.

"I hate you."

"All right!"

Daisya peeled away from the wall, dragging Kanda behind him.

"Hey! I didn't–"

"You'll pick it up fine! Just follow me."

The barrage of notes from two or three different instruments hid the melody, and Kanda couldn't hear the beat for the cross rhythms. Somehow, though, Daisya could plant his feet in the middle of all of it, and jumped on each beat like a stepping stone.

Kanda hated the speed with which he moved — he could barely keep up without tripping over his own feet.

There would be hell to pay in a couple of days.

But for now, Daisya was spinning around with an idiot grin on his face.

And at first Kanda had been tripping over his own feet.

And he still resented the fingers gripping his.

But, in his anger — at the slipperiness of the beat, and the creepy bastard dragging him around, at the sleep-deprived jitteriness of his thoughts — he felt alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am pathetic, and I cannot think of a better word to describe the lowest depths of my soul. The main excuse I have is that Kanda is probably too tired to think properly, let alone give Daisya a good beating. Daisya, on the other hand, has an inexhaustible supply of being annoying in its purest form, and uses it as he likes. Marie, of course, just likes a good show.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small dissertation on gifted kids - I had to spend a good deal of my school years in the same school as the kids in my city's gifted program, and from what I was able to observe, there are three things they tend to have in common.
> 
> 1\. They all argue like the devil. If two of them get into an argument, they will use every available piece of evidence to try and prove their point, and will only give in once each of their points has been definitely and logically refuted.
> 
> 2\. They get bored really easily. While in the normal junior high classes the students just sat down and listened to the teacher, the gifted classes sat around and talked, made paper cranes, played the powder game and dino run on the computer, and played connect four in math class. I'm amazed they even passed, but they did, and with flying colours, even if they did talk the building down.
> 
> 3\. Linked with 2, if they do some sort of activity, be it gymnastics or piano, it will be to a ridiculous extent. On kid was in ARCT piano before he finished junior high, one girl did gymnastics 3 hours a day, 6 days a week, and a kid in my choir who was in the program did debate on a national level. And these weren't supergeniuses - most of the kids in the program seemed mostly normal, and didn't invent anything extraordinary. Mostly they were slightly annoying and slightly weird.
> 
> Thus, I'd say it's a 50/50 chance that Daisya, as he's characterized in the anime, is gifted. It doesn't affect his character at all, but I just found it interesting how he reminded me of some of the kids in the program.
> 
> This chapter is regrettably short, but I'd be a fool to waste the opportunity to cut it off where I did.

Daisya flopped down on the bed with a sigh of relief. This room was nice and big, with two narrow beds along each wall, a dresser with a large kerosene lamp, and faded wooden walls and floors. It was on the second floor, too, so the ceiling was filled with rafters and crossbeams. It felt nice and airy.

"Whew, another bed! It's our lucky day."

He looked over at Kanda, who had dumped his bag at the end of his bed, and whose hair was momentarily loose, for once.

"Just be quiet."

Kanda tried to snap, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Yeah, yeah."

"Shut up."

It was only six o' clock, and he was not willing to stay awake another moment. Beds were hard to come by, and the last time they'd stayed the night in one, Daisya  _had_  to drag him off.

But now he'd promised to shut up, in return. Kanda couldn't have paid him enough to do that.

"I still don't see why we all have to share a room," he grumbled, complaining to what should have been the thankfully unresponsive Daisya.

"It's cheaper, I guess."

Goddamnit.

"Shut up."

They'd even bothered to change clothes for the occasion, but Marie and Tiedoll were securing transport out the city. Austro-Hungary had nowhere near the modernization level of France or Germany, so the train lines were less reliable, and the town they were headed to was a bit of a backwater, making it even more difficult to get there speedily. Time was still a precious commodity.

Kanda wandered over to the window, to latch the shutters down. The last thing he needed was any more noise in the night, besides Daisya's tossing and Tiedoll's morning routine at 4:30 ante meridian.

He let out a sigh as he moved quickly, snapping the metal bolt over the greying wood, smoothed by wear. The window ledge was high enough up for him to need to stand on it to properly close the window, and he sent up a quick prayer that Daisya hadn't been looking to notice.

Though, if he had been, retribution would have been slow. Even with his stamina, Kanda's chest felt heavy from the fatigue of sleepless nights and days spent traveling. The air here was smoke-smelling from the fireplace and slightly stale, but he drank it in like an elixir.

A light push on the shutters proved the latch to be useless, so Kanda left them open, with an unlit kerosene lamp on the ledge. The alley outside was fairly quiet, anyway. And after so many days, Daisya's repertoire of sheet-rustling blended into the background, like the wind or the sound of voices.

Even his words blended into the background, as Kanda realized the stream of mumbling that was Daisya talking to himself had passed over his head, and that the other kid had already pulled the covers up over his head. It was a funny habit of his.

Kanda collapsed on the bed. The room was warm and dark, and the mattress was welcome after sleeping on benches. Even the muffled breathing from the other side of the room gave the silence a comforting texture, with the cooler air from the window painting across it.

That night, Kanda slept deeply enough to dream.

…

At eight o' clock, Noise Marie and General Tiedoll were still awake, sitting at the corner table downstairs. The past few hours had been a slew of theories, maps, and doubt.

"So it's possible the the whole population of the town might be akuma?" asked Marie in a low voice, "That would be difficult to achieve. Akuma have to be called back, and it's a reasonably-sized town."

Tiedoll looked to the side, begrudging his former pupil his point.

"Yes, it would logistically be a bit of a challenge, but it could happen by coincidence, if there was Innocence there that they could not find. And it would be simpler to accomplish if a broker were involved."

"Even so, they would have found the Innocence by now if it were there, and otherwise there is no reason for a town of akuma to exist."

Marie shifted position on a chair far too small for him.

"Then again," he conceded, "We have no better option as of yet."

Noah involvement had been struck down on the basis of the indiscriminate slaughter of the finders. Noah were, in a way, human. They liked style.

Had the Noah killed them, the finders would have had plenty of time to transmit one last scream.

There were some exceptions, but they had been gone over in detail and discarded. It never paid to be too careful, with the Noah. Level one akuma were predictable, if dangerous, and level twos were only trouble in numbers to a team of their strength.

Tiedoll thought for a moment, then nodded to himself.

"Would you say we have covered all possibilities?"

Marie's eyes closed for a moment, in a purely symbolic gesture.

"Yes, I believe."

Tiedoll nodded, keeping his voice even quieter than before.

"Then we shall have to leave the kids to their own devices. There's a reason we stopped here. I finder I once worked with retired here — I think we should pay him a visit."

Marie was puzzled.

"Why would a finder know what to do? Their training is for survival, not–"

Tiedoll put a finger to his lips as a more polite was of interrupting.

"Precisely, though not many make it. I imagine there is a reason this one survived to retire."

Marie nodded, yielding the argument.

A few minutes later, having paid the bill, the two exorcists headed out, walking in the even strides of those who had nothing to fear from the night.

…

In a decade or two, the Austro-Hungarian empire would be involved in the start of a war engulfing the world.

For the last few years, even decades, Austro-Hungary, or its predecessor, Austria, had been torn in either the pan-European conflicts of the nineteenth century or the equally renowned nationalist movements of the same time period.

It would so happen that, at ten o' clock at night, in Budapest, a nationalist Magyar would set fire to the inn of a pro-empire Austrian. A stone, with burning rags wrapped around it, sailed through an open window, knocking a kerosene lamp off the dresser and on to the floor. The spilt liquid quickly caught fire, and slowly the flames worked their way across the inn.

As the nature of exorcists' missions normally requires secrecy, no one was recorded as being on the second floor. By the time of the fire, the only person aware of the four beds to be filled was somewhere beyond the reach of word - namely, comatose in a bar.

That Austrian innkeeper had, hours earlier, rented the room to another Austrian, an exorcist by the name of Noise Marie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A cliffhanger is the perfect opportunity to blackmail all who read it here into review the damn story. However, it's a bit of a cheap threat, because the cliffhanger's been resolved on ff, so whatever. Anyway, please read and review, and thanks to NTLeo for being the only person to have reviewed so far.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I updated, but these next two chapters are just a little filler arc, so I figured there's no harm done.

Noise Marie was fifteen, and on a trip home.

Of course, the fact that he was traveling near his birthplace was merely a coincidence. The purpose of his mission was to neutralize an area that had become suspiciously akuma-ridden, probably with the help of a broker - one who targets the relatives and loved ones of the recently deceased, and ensures that they call back an akuma, in exchange for payments from the Millennium Earl. They were easy to deal with, but difficult to catch, hence the Order sending Marie, whose battle skills could be improved upon, but whose mind could not.

The brief visit home enroute had been uneventful, with the typical gauntlet of over-fond aunts who somehow felt the need to pinch the cheek of a boy already far taller than them. His parents and older sisters had remained virtually unchanged from the day the General had visited, and his younger brother had merely become taller. Marie still had an edge on him, though, and the pout he'd given when he'd discovered that had showed that he hadn't changed much either. The whole family had chuckled.

But Marie was...not happy, but not sad to leave. He had no need to stay.

It had been pleasant to catch up, yes, but the air he'd breathed fine for more than a decade now seemed stifling. The few days he'd spent there, with his finder getting more and more on edge, had been enough.

For a moment, he'd wondered, before coming to a realization.

Nothing there had changed. Now that he thought about it, nothing should have changed since his birth, but for the presence of his brother.

...

His shoes now clacked down on the cobblestones of the main square of this new town, but he paid no mind to the contrast between the thud of boots on the old dirt road and the harsher noise now produced by the cobbles.

The time for that would be later.

For now, he had to determine a strategy. Though his Innocence wasn't easy to convert to combat mode, it was extraordinarily useful in detecting akuma. Most exorcists wore a disguise while traveling alone, and so posing as a busker was fairly simple. His coat and the soles of his shoes were worn enough to suggest a life spent on the road, sleeping wherever there was a flat piece of ground to be had.

To be fair, that was the case on some missions. But never mind that — the key was that no one paid much mind to an ageless-looking boy sitting between stone buildings on a blanket, plucking out a childhood tune on a makeshift harp of strings clumsily tied to a few pieces of wood. They ignored him, but regardless, the music found its way to their ears.

Sometimes, like here, he'd hum a counterpoint, covering up the strings. Sometimes, the akuma were smarter than he'd like.

From here on in, it was the task of the finder standing in the courtyard of a cafe to observe the reactions of the crowd.

...

The square and the crowd within its confines weren't so large as to be difficult to see across, but they were large enough for Marie to get a coin or two in the cap he placed in front of him. At one end, a simple gothic-style church overlooked the milling mass of humanity, complemented by three walls formed of shops, bakeries, and a few houses.

He looked around for a moment, admiring the carvings around the doors of the church, then quickly looked back at the instrument as a shadow moved in the corner of his eye. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. He hoped the akuma here wouldn't be too observant.

A woman passed close, fine-stitched shoes marking her as a merchant, or the wife of one. Over top of them, the end of a muslin skirt swayed. Akuma, not akuma. Akuma, not akuma.

There was a way to deal with her, regardless.

Marie nodded at her. A friendly gesture. Then he smiled, but added an edge of the hunger of a destitute. That normally did it. If she stayed a moment longer, he'd hold out a hand expectantly. Even the most fascinated of watchers balked at the thought of giving money.

But happily, she wandered back into the crowd as quickly as she'd materialized out of it.

...

The song echoed out against the stone, playing out for a few more measures before he switched to a more dance-like tune.

As he shifted his fingers, a quick glance up to the finder revealed that the crowd was about half-and-half — a broker was definitely facilitating the Earl in his work.

The akuma would have to be eliminated, but not before the broker was found. They were observant, knowing that their lives were worthless to those nominally in the service of God. Any disappearances and fights would be duly noted, and before the day was up the town would be missing a cleric or a doctor. Or, in one odd case, a dentist.

Marie continued to play after this conclusion, the reasons for which were threefold.

1\. He would still need time to deduce the location of the broker.

2\. Stopping too early would attract suspicion.

3\. A little extra money was never a bad thing.

The finder had disappeared for now, likely to pay a visit to the office of the local bookkeeper, and then to any hospitals she could find. Marie would have a look at the church once he was done playing. If anyone saw the two of them together, they were both wandering workers, traveling together for protection. She was a seamstress and occasionally an accountant, he a busker and music teacher. The Order's training was fairly comprehensive for anyone wishing to specialize.

...

In fact, he'd often wondered why Beatrycze (for all her stocky build and six feet of height, nicknamed Trixie) was a finder in the first place. She was certainly skilled enough to be a tailor, and her aptitude for mathematics would have made her at home in the office of a Lord.

As with most finders, you didn't ask questions. Though Trixie had been a fairly regular companion for the years he'd been at the order, he knew her no more than he did his aunts.

Until they quit, finders were walking corpses. Any friendship or otherwise was discouraged.

In the end, because he couldn't let a question go without at least one explanation, he'd decided that she was as much a thrill seeker as were some of the younger exorcists: she took mostly one-exorcist missions, where the finder was essentially a bipedal telephone, compass, encyclopaedia, and work horse.

Perhaps a life behind a sewing machine or a set of books would never allow her peace.

Whatever the reason, Trixie was efficient, and they'd both run these types of mission before. As mentioned before, the difficulty was not in the planning, but in the execution.

One bullet was a death sentence, unless you resorted to self-mutilation. Akuma either had to be dealt with stealthily, in small groups, or all at once. From the looks of this town, and the number people wincing as they passed, Marie would be glad of his strings' ability to paralyze and isolate akuma. He'd probably do that, and get Trixie to round up as many as she could in barriers before wiping them out all at once.

But first, they'd kill the broker.

...

Theoretically, Innocence could not kill.

Realistically, the strings were strands of metal that could as easily garrotte a human as an akuma. This made many things tricky for equip-type users and some parasite-types. The young girl who had just joined — Antonina, her name was — had strangled a dog in self-defence with the Innocence in her hair before being brought to the order.

Poor Antonina. She loved to play the piano.

...

Now, that aside, would a town this small have a hospital? It was once far larger, but that was no guarantee the building would still be operating…

…

The strings played a last diminished chord as Marie decided that the broker was most likely working out of the church. The crowd in front had been losing its akuma concentration when he'd started playing, so likely there was just a high initial density to protect the church.

He bowed for posterity — no one had stayed to watch the simple boy with his simple instrument — and packed up his bag. No one wondered why a busker had a pack with enough pockets to hold five dollars' worth of fossilized penny candy. They just parted as he passed on his way through the church doors.

Actually, that last bit was untrue. The crowd parted for a short funeral procession of two mourners, and a coffin no more than four feet long.

Marie quickly stood off to the side, and considered thanking God for the luck of having someone die so conveniently. He decided against it. From what he'd seen and heard, God might not be appreciative of that particular wording.

...

The procession passed in short order, and the crowd flowed back over the path like the Red Sea.

Marie slid between bodies, apologizing for each stepped-on foot, and walked softly though the church's side door.

It was like entering another world, of silence and darkness.

From the grey-lit antechamber, he could hear the eulogist speaking on the virtues of the deceased, namely that her life had been devoid of sin, and so she was rewarded with an early ticket to heaven.

Marie hoped briefly that the eulogist was right, but from the one voice be heard sobbing, he doubted that the mourner would give up the chance to have the child back. They never did. They never do.

A pity.

He leaned against the wall, out of sight, and waited for the speech to end. If he could take care of the broker here, Trixie could search for data linking to the Earl.

He ran his fingers over the stone as a pastime. Not too finely carved…maybe limestone?

In half a decade, he would be able to identify the type of stone by touch.

He waited in the half-light. Marie was good at waiting.

Though, he never quite knew what he was waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That being said, after the next chapter I think I'm just not going to update for a while in hopes of blackmailing you (presumably) four into giving some feedback, preferably useful criticism. I'm not at all picky, but something's miles better than nothing.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back again with part 2 of the miscellaneously low-quality filler story, so sit tight and next chapter, I promise, the cliffhanger of where we left our main characters will be resolved. Somewhat. 
> 
> As everyone here knows, Daisya is practically a non-entity in the manga and is a 3-episode (and like 40 seconds at the end of episode 34) wonder, and the fandom hasn't really been active in years, so to find fanfiction is quite a task, as some of the stuff on this website is too badly written for me to glean even the barest amount of meaning from it. This has led to me spending quite a while trawling about on livejournal like some post-apocalyptic fisherman trying to find species and artifacts from a bygone era. Needless to say, if you've got time and patience (the site is like the unholy offspring of facebook, tumblr, and the online pet game forums I used in grade eight) it can be quite productive for finding fanfic about minor characters.
> 
> Had I any real skill with drawing, I would make illustrations for this, as I have a very clear image of what each scene is supposed to look like, and it is generally significant to the scene. Alas, it does not translate well to the writing. If a section appears particularly choppy or dialogue-filled, visualizing the scene from the description may help. I cannot stress enough that this is not a good chapter, but I can't rework it to make it better without destroying and replacing it, so my apologies.
> 
> Anyhow, hopefully you enjoy your reading to some degree or another.

The service rambled and rambled, and Marie was more than prepared to slip silently into the sanctuary once it reached its inevitable conclusion.

The few attendees slipped out, until two remained. The sobbing man, and the priest.

Marie tried to make out the conversation. His hearing was naturally good, and the church's acoustics were excellent.

"…I'm sure she would enjoy a second chance here on earth…"

So the priest _was_ the broker. Hopefully Trixie would be back soon.

He started to edge into the sanctuary, careful not to make noise or sudden movement.

"Do you really think so?" the sobber asked, voice choked. From the depth of his tones, he was likely her father or an adult brother.

"Yes. I am a messenger of God."

That was remarkably conceited.

"If you're sure–"

Marie took a deep breath.

"Excuse me!"

The embarrassingly polite interjection echoed off the archways, and Marie chose the moment to walk down the centre aisle. His deep voice would likely grant him some authority, and even better if they didn't guess his age in the half-light of a cloudy day, but he wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. He'd try to use the authority of an exorcist. His entrance would help too — watching the General and the other Generals and taught him the effect of gravitas.

"The child died sinless. Why should we take that from her?"

Marie hoped the the echoes would give the impression of an oracle. Winning the argument was the best bet, but doing so by insistence was also an option. Probably the better choice for this situation, at least. Logic was never useful in the face of human emotion.

"Wha'…" the sobber broke off, looking dazed, then indignant, "How do you know?"

Marie had reached the two of them, and the priest still looked too surprised to speak. He produced the badge of an exorcist.

"I am an exorcist, in the name of God. She will be happy, like this."

"Will…will she?"

Marie felt a tinge of satisfaction at being able to gauge the situation. The mourner was obviously in no fit state to reason.

"Yes."

"Promise?"

Maybe her older brother, then. He seemed childish–

"No."

The priest had decided to speak again.

"You'd listen to this– this _child_ over the priest?" he sputtered, rage imprinted on his face.

For a moment, the priest had given up his even-voiced dignity. That was what Marie needed. He was rather proud of his next line, which he made up on the spot.

"And you would stop the girl from ascending to heaven? Let her have her happiness."

"You–!"

Marie had been bluffing on an empty hand since the beginning. Raising another time was simple.

"I am an exorcist, in the name of God the almighty! Who are you to go against me?"

The priest looked back to the mourner, who seemed to still be in a state of shock.

"Say her name! She's calling for you, say her name…"

The mourner looked for a moment as if he were about to speak, and Marie cut in before the argument could go on for too much longer. The akuma would be coming pretty soon.

"No."

Marie raised a hand, and let the strings unfurl in a blaze of light and music. It filled the church, nearly blinding, and streamed out of the windows, illuminating the pale colour of the stone and the brilliance of the stained glass windows. A little showing-off did more good than harm, and now the mourner was paralyzed in awe, and could not see or hear the movement of the Innocence.

Marie performed the execution switfly. The strings curled around the priest, first gagging him, then wrapping around his neck.

"May you be saved from your sins, as was the girl."

"Marie spoke the words as he would a verse, and tightened the strings around the priest's neck, adding another burst of light and sound to block out the struggling and shouting. He knew that this was the right course of action, but the sobber might be confused.

The chord echoed off of the walls, and the light still blazed out of the windows, attracting the attention of akuma. When Marie let the sensations fade, he knew he had maybe a minute.

"Stay here," he said to the man, who had rushed over to the priest's body, "You're in danger."

"Did you…?"

"Innocence cannot harm humans," Marie said comfortingly, turning to leave. It was the truth.

Marie didn't bother to look when he ran out the church doors, instead releasing his strings to tie themselves between the church and the other buildings. One attached itself to the thatched roof of a tailor, one to the chimney of a bakery, and more criss-crossing over top of and through the square. A net of wire would leave him exposed for a moment, but a moment was all he needed.

The net cast a moving shadow for a moment, and the humans started to run in their confusion. How handy.

The strings tautened, and held fast. Three seconds, that was all he needed.

He visualized the chord. A tritone on top of a tritone, and then a minor second on top of that. A chord discomfiting for most humans, and agony for akuma when transmitted through the strings.

It rang out at an impossible volume, bouncing off the walls of stone. If Trixie wasn't already on her way, she'd come running. He hoped he wouldn't need the assistance of a barrier but, well, you never know.

The surviving exorcists knew that very, very well.

Some akuma fell to the ground as he played, others merely doubled over, and most immediately transformed. The majority of the crowd was akuma, and the few remaining humans would run away when all hell broke loose.

That was, in fact, a second later, when Marie untied four of his strings and ripped into the akuma like a wolf's teeth into a throat.

The mounds of dust covering in the square were blowing away, shifting like sands over the grey paving stones. Marie let himself catch his breath, and doubled over. He'd only just managed to save the last one. A moment longer and he, too, would be dust.

A voice spoke up from behind him.

"I guess the guy _was_ in the church."

Trixie. She was probably somewhat miffed not to have caught any action.

"Yes."

She walked up beside him, facing backwards and holding a barrier-maker in each hand, each spewing light into the sky.

Marie's eyes widened at the sight, and he instinctively whipped around to where two akuma were hovering, trapped behind him.

"You missed a couple," Trixie said dryly, "You owe me a drink."

Marie nodded.

"Thank you. I acquiesce."

Another voice spoke up from behind the two of them, and Marie turned around. Grey sky matched grey stone, and the grey face of the mourner.

"I was watching," he said sheepishly, "Were those things 'akuma'?"

Marie looked at Trixie, then back to the mourner.

"Yes."

"Oh."

It was an odd little tableau. Trixie, facing out of the square, still keeping the akuma trapped. Marie, facing inwards, and smiling the stiff grin of the taciturn confronted with speech. The third piece was the mourner, holding a beaten cap in both hands, facing Marie with an identical grimace.

There was an awkward gap in the conversation, which Marie attempted to fill.

"What's your name?"

"Joseph Hofer."

"What's your profession."

"Innkeeper."

Marie nodded kindly.

Very good. I shall remember that."

Marie produced a notepad and the stub of a pencil from one of his pockets, and wrote down the name. He nodded at Joseph, who nodded back absently.

"I would advise moving to a larger city. You may get more patrons."

Marie turned - to finish off the akuma Trixie was holding - before Joseph spoke for a last time.

"Wait…" he started, hesitantly, "Who are you?"

"Beatrycze Krawczyk…" muttered Trixie, still facing away.

"…and Noise Marie," Marie continued, "We may well see you again."

He turned back, and unfurled a handful of strings.

It was eight o' clock, two hours prior to the nationalist's act of arson. Tiedoll and Marie were having a time of finding their way to the bridge across the river.

"That innkeeper seemed awfully glad to see you," Tiedoll mused, "Were you the one who got his name for us?"

The exorcists had lists of trusted innkeepers, coach-drivers, and members of any other profession the exorcists had use of. It wasn't much, but generally it was enough. The names on the list knew enough about akuma never to summon one.

"Yes," Marie replied, "I believe so. I ran into him when I was on my trip home…six years ago, I think."

They turned a corner, weaving through an alley. The light was going fairly quickly, and already the streets were lit with lanterns.

"Mmm. That was a mission with Trixie, right?"

Marie didn't know why the General bothered to memorize the names of the finders, but somehow it seemed right that he should do it.

"Yes. Two years before she died, I believe."

"That was a pity. She was a good finder."

"Yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Marie seems a bit callous in this chapter, particularly when contrasted with his character being exceedingly kind, I just imagine that he'd have been quite shy as a kid, which translates to far more awkward and socially unskilled conversation. It would have taken him quite a while to become as comfortable with everyone as he is in the manga proper. Also, this is pre-20th century Europe, so religion is far more of a guiding force. There would have been no doubt that the priest deserved to die, as he betrayed the church.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before wondering about the logic in this chapter, I urge you to remember the following: adrenaline, sleep-deprived delirium, and the odd, odd structure of the juvenile mind. Also, no one got around to telling Daisya that Kanda's practically invulnerable.
> 
> Please review, kudos, give some sort of feedback. I will lap up even the barest increase in hits

Daisya woke up to the smell of smoke hanging in the air, and the sensation of burning heat.

The sharp intake of breath scraped through his throat like sandpaper, the smoke already clouding his eyes and making them sting. Fire. It wasn't here yet, but it would be soon.

He tried to get up, tangling himself with his blankets before he fell to the floor, coughing. The wooden floor was hot. Through blurred eyes, he picked out the red glow behind the door, eating away at it.

They had a few minutes. The door wasn't an option, so he'd have to jump out the window. It was about fifteen feet, or so. If they were both awake, and preferably with something softer than packed dirt beneath them, they could make it. He'd jumped out windows before, though those ones had been a lot closer to the ground. The old man and Marie didn't seem to be here, so they wouldn't be any help. Exorcists traveled in secret, and the innkeeper would have gotten them if he'd been around, or conscious.

So they were on their own.

Daisya pulled the collar of his shirt over his mouth, and took a deep breath. They had to get out of there.

In a flash of movement, grabbed the bed frame to pull himself up, and recoiled. It was metal, and hot enough to leave a burn. He quickly stuck his fingers in his mouth, and stayed low to the ground, making his way to Kanda's bed. Despite the heat and the smoke, he didn't seem to have woken up. Weird. And, Daisya saw as he approached, he was tossing about as if fighting something in his sleep.

"Kanda, wake up! Kanda!"

Daisya stood up, eyes narrowed in the smoke, and shook Kanda by the shoulders. If he didn't wake up soon, he'd be sick from the smoke.

"Kanda!"

The fire started eating through the door as the exorcist's head lolled, and his lips moved imperceptibly.

"Alma…"

Daisya winced as he heard the crackling. Not much time left, but he still had some. The old man and Marie might have more important stuff in their bags than just a few spare clothes. He'd best grab them.

He dragged Kanda out of the bed and across the floor, laying him down underneath the window. If he tossed Kanda out unconscious, the best he'd come off with was some bruising or a broken leg. At worst, he'd be dead. Necks were pretty easy to break, he'd been told.

He ran back into the room, shielding his face with his hands. The fire was past the door now, so this was not a smart idea, but he couldn't wake Kanda up, and he couldn't jump with him without breaking something. Doing this, the worst he'd come off with was burns. And besides, he was used to the heat and the smoke. Bodrum without brush fires was like a day there without sunshine. Never happened.

He grabbed the old man's bag, then the rest of theirs for good measure. They weren't so heavy, now that he thought about it. Actually, minus the heat and the smoke, he felt alive.

A flame licked closer to his feet, and he skidded backwards. That was close. Now the flames were halfway up the two beds closest to the door, and moving quickly. He half crawled, half ran back to the window. The smoke was getting thicker by the moment.

What Daisya didn't know or notice was that the attic, full of dry straw and dust, was already ablaze, and working its way through the ceiling.

The door was coals, and flames curled off the floor and the ceiling. Daisya dragged the last backpack beneath the window, keeping low to the ground. Kanda still hadn't woken up, which wasn't good. He'd have to jump with him, but the bags would break the fall. If they were lucky, they'd get away with a twisted ankle or two.

Daisya stood up, pushed open the shutters, and flung the lamp behind him. Waiting a few moments longer would kill time. Kanda and Marie would probably say it would kill him too, but it gave just a few more moments for Kanda to wake up. People were staying away from the burning inn, so there was a chance the backpacks would still be there when they had to jump.

One, two, three, four. The flames snaked across the room. The heat was unbearable, but even so he took his shirt off, balling it up and tossing it out the window. Better a small burn on your skin than your clothing on fire. That's what they said.

It was hot as hell, and dry as a desert.

Just like home.

"Kanda!"

One last shout and a kick, and a pair of dark eyes blinked open.

"Daisya…"

The word was a gasp, and Kanda's eyes looked red and raw.

"What are you...what the hell is going on?!"

The tail of the sentence flicked up in panic as Kanda took in the scene. He tried to stagger to his feet.

But Daisya had already slung Kanda's arm over his shoulder, and stood up. He could barely see back into the room for smoke and flames. Coals had started to fall from the ceiling, marking the floor.

"Inn's on fire. You've got to jump."

Daisya pushed Kanda up to the window, which was just low enough for him to climb up on to the sill.

Kanda looked down on to the street, and Daisya saw a ghost moving somewhere behind his eyes.

Alma…

He tried to keep his voice calm, but the fire was close. Kanda had been shielded by his distance and now by the air outside, but he already suspected he was pretty burnt up. He'd regret this, later.

"Kanda, you've got to jump!"

Kanda seed oddly frozen.

Something heavy and wooden fell a few feet behind him, but Daisya didn't bother to look. His heart was already hammering in his ears. He'd wasted too much time.

"Kanda!"

Daisya heard something closer to him crack, and finally gave into the urge to look.

The fire was a few feet from him, almost at the fallen lamp, and embers were practically raining from the ceiling. The heavy wooden crossbeam above the window was weakening by the moment. He could feel the hairs crisping on the back of his neck.

Something jumped up and down in his memory, sticking out its tongue in a desperate attempt to attract his attention.

There was something liquid around his feet.

The lamp. The glass spilling kerosene.

"I…can't…"

He was barely aware of Kanda's murmur, but the world suddenly aligned in his mind.

...

Kanda felt frozen. Hideously frozen.

He remembered a cliff from…that time. Just before he met Marie.

He had to jump.

He had to jump.

Alma…

He couldn't hear the fire crackling behind him, eating at the wood.

Alma…

He was vaguely aware of Daiysa's yelling.

Alma…

_Alma…_

"I can't…"

Kanda felt a hand in the small of his back.

...

Daisya gave a small laugh, and pushed.

Kanda fell out of the window as the crossbeam fell, and the flames found the lamp. There was the sound of falling embers and flying glass and wordless agony.

Two voices screamed.

" _DAISYA!_ "


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say, but where it is ambiguous who someone is talking about in this chapter, there may be two people meant to be the subject of the words. Or I've just forgotten to use names instead of pronouns again. You all may never know.

Marie heard the scream of…rage?

No — not just one scream. Two. One came after that spoke of pain, like the one that had torn from his throat when his eyes were slashed, and the first one that was similar in texture. Anger mixed with something indefinable, and poured into the shape of a word.

There was something in it that pierced through the strata of the mind and hit the button marked 'run'.

It was dark out in Budapest, but the myriad lights of the city polluted the sky with light, forming an orange glow that faded as it climbed up into the darkness of the horizon. Down the crooked street, and over the thatch and tile rooves, had he sight he would have been able to see the half of the city blockaded by a river. He could hear the faint rushing of the water, winding lazily, and the crackling of a dozen fires — both within the hearths of the shops and houses surrounding him, and without.

In the air, there was the faintly bitter scent of smoke, as of things burning that should never have been hot.

Oh, no…

"General — that was Kanda."

He said it as calmly as possible, so as not to draw attention, but he could hear his heart start to speed up. The General must have heard the scream in some capacity.

The gutters and alleyways were pitch black by now, so no one could see them where they paused. Just out of the light of a wrought-iron street lamp, Marie's posture had changed, coiling like a spring.

He heard the General take in a breath.

"I can see something burning."

Marie nodded gravely. He was rarely wrong, however much he regretted it.

"May I suggest we run?"

Tiedoll spoke calmly, but in a brighter tone than Marie was used to.

"Yes."

...

Two figures took off through the streets, running quickly for their size.

Tiedoll felt his breath hanging ragged in his lungs. The kids could take care of themselves — Kanda especially, and even Daisya had been held on a loose rein by his parents — but the two of them would have been sound asleep. And Daisya was all too difficult to wake up…

They turned another dark corner, and the street was filled with noises of indignation.

If cutting through the crowds as through akuma could have made them move any faster, Tiedoll would not have hesitated.

…

Daisya had held his breath in pain, preparing to let it out with a gasp as he crashed on to the ground. He was surrounded by flames, and he was sure he was bleeding in more than a few places from the glass shards. It felt like he was on fire. Actually, he probably was on fire.

Still, the adrenaline coursing through him didn't allow for a lapse in movement.

As if in a dream, he launched himself forwards, perching on the window ledge. He looked down, though he didn't see much. The smoke stung his eyes, and drew out tears. Kanda would have gotten out of there now, with a few of the bags if he had any sense, so the ground would be hard, and gritty with dirt and stones and–

Unconsciously, he winced.

No. He had to jump. He had to jump. Remember what happened to Kanda?

Better a broken arm than broken lungs, better pain than passing out.

He pressed the heel of his hand into the ledge, and pushed off.

...

Four seconds.

The night air was warm from the blaze, but cool compared to the furnace he'd escaped. It flowed over him as he fell, and he let the tension in him uncoil.

They'd said that it kept your insides from getting messed up if you got hit hard. They said you could survive a pretty high fall when you did that.

Three seconds.

Even so, he'd probably break something.

Maybe an arm? And then he'd get his burns ground into the dirt and rocks and–

This was going to hurt like seven hells.

This was not a good idea.

Two seconds.

_Why hadn't he–_

There was the sound of cloth moving.

One second–

…

He fell heavily, and gasped in pain and shock.

It was going to be weeks before it stopped hurting.

Wait–

Nothing was broken. There was no telltale snap of bone.

He was in the air, not on the ground, with the dirt grinding into his skin.

Fingers curled over his shoulder, and there was the brush of air as whatever held him moved.

Someone had caught him.

He opened his eyes.

Kanda stared ahead, something flickering in his eyes, behind the blankness.

…

Marie rounded the corner, following the General's footsteps. He had to admit, at times like this, sight would have been an advantage. The heat was radiating in waves, and the crackling noise filled the air.

"Oh, thank god you're safe. Is Daisya okay? What happened…"

A quick flurry of words ensued, with the General's voice shaking like the timbers of the inn and Kanda's replies stayed even, and hushed to the point of murmuring. They both had the right to have been shaken.

However, the exact words of the General and the child were drowned out by his own thoughts.

There were a few things that were unexpected about the scene.

Kanda's survival expected, but there was one question Marie felt form on his tongue.

If Kanda had survived unharmed, why had it been Kanda screaming?

…

Tiedoll was relieved to see both of his apprentices alive, but he still needed to hear the story. Kanda looked almost shaken-up — something that was neither expected nor comforting. His eyes slipped to one side or the other, sunken in their sockets.

"Don't remember when we fell asleep," Kanda had said, as if searching his memory, "The fire was inside the door when I woke up. Couldn't see too well. Thought Daisya was awake. I got the bags, but then I had to go get Daisya. Had to carry him out. The rafters were weak. The lamp exploded."

The story had rolled out somewhat robotically, but it was in Kanda's style of speech — short and choppy.

Tiedoll put it out of mind as he examined the full extent of Daisya's injuries. His back, neck, and legs were burnt, and he was covered in blood from where the shards of glass had hit him. From the look of the damage, it was a wonder both of them had gotten out. Scarring was inevitable, but these days there were few exorcists intact in both mind and body. Daisya would have to choose just one. There still might have been some stuck in his skin, but he couldn't see properly in the light. Best to assess the damage, and fix it than dwell upon the consequences.

Oh, well.

It was bad, but broken bones could have crippled him for months. He might still be able to fight, depending on the speed of his recovery.

Better to dally here than to waste another exorcist.

He announced his findings to Marie and Kanda, and picked the boy up. They needed to find a hospital.

Just this once, he thanked God for Kanda's suicidal urge to save.

…

Kanda examined the sky in agitation. Agitation at what, he couldn't say, to his annoyance. He could say it was because he could feel the seconds trickling by as doubtlessly another team of finders met their demise. But he couldn't. They were finders. That was their job.

He'd like to say it was because he felt angry at being forced to stay here, held back from doing the only job he had in order to watch some brat sleep the day away in off-white sheets in a less-white room.

Mostly he was angry at Daisya.

Why?

Because he threw him out a damn window, that's why!

Is it really?

Do you remember why you wouldn't jump?

Yes, but that was just for a moment, he didn't have to push me, the bastard!

You're awfully agitated. You were thinking of Alma, weren't you?

Shut up.

And do you remember what Alma did?

He killed people.

He also pushed you off a cliff.

Yeah, but killing people is more important than that. It wasn't even a cliff.

He made you fall. He saved you.

Yeah, what's your point?

You should know.

_Shut up!_

The words escaped Kanda's lips, albeit in a whisper.

He was angry at Daisya.

No, he _hated_ Daisya.

He was chatty, creepy, and obnoxious.

He had pushed him out of the window, then asked him to lie about it.

Bastard.

Bastard bastard bastardbastard _bastard._

He hated him.

Kanda hated him.

…

This is after. First there was before.

…

"Hey, Kanda?"

Kanda leaned Daisya against the wall, far enough from the inn for the air to be cool. The boy gasped as he felt the rough wood on his blistered back, and the world seemed to darken for a moment.

"What?"

The answer was flat, as it was calculated to be.

Kanda's face blurred again, and Daisya's grimace resembled a grin for a moment.

"Could…could you do me a favour?" he asked, breathing heavily.

Kanda ignored him, propping him up against a bag he'd grabbed. The shock and pain from the fire and the fatigue they both felt were taking their toll on Daisya. He'd be out in a few seconds.

"The…old man'll be pretty mad if I…tell him…what happened–"

Daisya broke off, coughing. Despite keeping close to the ground, he'd breathed in a lot of smoke.

"…anyway, don't tell him that I pushed you."

The words tumbled out in a whisper, and there was another rasping breath.

"You think you can make up a story?"

Daisya grinned, but his teeth were gritted. In a few seconds, he was going to faint. The ashes from the ceiling had been like a grey snow. He could feel them on his skin, scraping into the burns.

Kanda hadn't answered yet — he was just glaring at him, glaring at him. He did glare, didn't he? Mean, wasn't it, Kanda? But you're not like that _all_ the time, Kanda, answer me, _answer me…_

The world went black.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read, review, force your friends to read and give feedback on the idiosyncrasies of my sentence structure, insult my word choice, give feedback of some sort. Maybe one day I'll succeed in brainwashing you guys. In the mean time, please enjoy!

**Thanks very much to Karina for commenting, though I can't say much for the remaining four of you. Anyhow, the first part of this story has finished (though the word count is about a third of the total.) Read, enjoy (if possible), and please review. And again, if anyone's got a character, ship, or headcanon they desperately want acknowledged, PM me. I won't guarantee I can include it, but any ideas are good story fuel.**

Daisya's world was still dark.

But now he was in a bed.

A nice bed, even if it did smell like soap. Everything smelled like soap.

He opened his eyes, and winced at the light. It took a few moments before he could even see what was in the room. Well, it wasn't really a room. Two of its walls were suspiciously yellowing curtains.

The old man was standing there, in the corner, with some other lady in a nurse's outfit. She was saying something in a low voice, but the old man politely put a finger to his lips. Damn. He'd have liked to hear the rest of that, though she was probably speaking in German or something. A few scars would be awesome, but if it was anything more than that it would get really inconvenient.

And he remembered the pain.

"Ah, Daiysa, it looks like you've finally woken up."

The old man smiled at him, and he shrugged, putting a hand to the back of his skull. He was pretty sure — yep, most of his hair had burned off. It would take a while to grow it back.

"Yup. How long was I out?"

"Not too long. You slept through the night well enough, and I believe it's around noon."

The old man was pretty good, so Daisya couldn't tell if he was lying or not. He probably was.

"I haven't looked at a clock in a while, and I do believe I left my watch with Kanda and Marie."

It was all he could do not to wince in recollection. Maybe, if he was really lucky, Kanda would wait 'til he was all healed before kicking him into oblivion.

"But all that aside," the old man finished, "How are you feeling?"

The sentence jolted Daisya's mind off of one track, and back on to the physical rails. He screwed up his face briefly, trying to analyze the input from his nerves. Best not to say too much about what happened, until he found out if Kanda had actually done what he'd told him to.

Not much chance, but eh, who knows? Sometimes you can get lucky.

"Pretty good. I'm a bit tired. Feels like I got a really bad sunburn."

Tiedoll couldn't help but chuckle at his apprentice's understatement. Daisya's injuries were some of the uglier burns he'd seen - they weren't so bad as a broken limb, but they would leave a mark. Hopefully not too much of one.

But exorcists didn't really have love lives, anyway. A disfigurement would just give Daisya credibility.

"Yes, that could be a good analogy. Kanda said that you got hit by a ceiling joist when he was carrying you out, so that would probably be the cause of most of your blistering. And apparently the cuts are from flying glass."

So Kanda did lie. Now _that_ was interesting.

"I must say," the old man continued, "I can't leave the two of you alone for more than a few minutes without you getting into some sort of trouble."

Daisya wasn't an expert, but the old man seemed to be hiding something. Whatever it was disappeared from his face when the nurse stepped up beside him, wiping her reddened hands on a cloth. Everything in this hospital seemed to be a bit worn - the sheets were threadbare, the wood was nearly grey, and the nurse's eyes looked to be short of a few nights' sleep.

"You should be glad there is no infection yet," she said choppily, "Otherwise you would be in lots of trouble."

A glare signalled that Daisya would also be in lots of trouble if he tried arguing, so he nodded. Nurses, he'd found out on various occasions, were not to be messed with. Not only did they have to deal with the doctors and the patients, they had to clean up the hospitals and work the worst hours. If you wanted a hospital's worth of people dead or diseased, just give the nurses a day off. They'd be glad of it.

He watched as the nurse muttered something in a different language to Tiedoll, and swept off. She obviously didn't approve of whatever got him there, in the first place.

Speaking of which, it was pretty weird what he was feeling. Which was basically nothing. The pain last night - if it was last night - had made him want to faint. Now he just felt fine.

"So, when are we leaving?" he asked, turning back, "The most important member of the team's awake, now. It'll get boring if we stay."

His natural support of selfish pride deflated slightly when he saw the old man's expression.

Actually, now that his eyes had grown used to the light, the room looked darker than it should be.

"Aw," he whined, drawing out the syllables,"Don't tell me we'll have to say here. We've got to get to the finders, right?"

The old man shook his head slightly, and tapped the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up his face. He avoided looking up. It was never a good side when adults were scared to look at you.

"Well," he said carefully, "The problem is…we do have to get there as soon as possible. Even staying here now is wasting time. But the type of burns you have really should have a few weeks to heal. The scarring can be permanent."

In the moment, the scene was incongruous. The old man, standing at the end of the bed as if at an audience, and the child staring, as always, with the iron self-centredness found in both sociopaths and a certain type of military general. The window, carefully positioned to throw light on the patient, added to the air of a court.

Daisya started to retort, to say that there was no way in hell he was staying here while Kanda got to go. Not in a million years.

But then he stopped, realizing what the old man had said, and grinned.

"That's it? Just scars?"

Daisya laughed.

"No way that's going to keep me here."

The old man's gaze took on the tones of a glare. Geez, he must have been worried if he was this nasty about it. They all had stuff to get to, so why waste time? He had to ask Kanda about why he lied. And about Alma. About a lot of things, actually, and the old man was fretting about _this_.

"It's not just–"

Daisya waved a hand, brushing the argument aside.

"Yeah, will I die?"

He didn't give the old man a chance to answer.

"No, but I'll be bored as he– as anything here."

...

Also I didn't save Kanda's ass so he could go traipsing off without me, he added in the privacy of his own mind. And Marie should be grateful to me, so he shouldn't go either. And you shouldn't go without me. I'm your student.

I'm not going to get stuck waiting in some boring old town.

You shouldn't go.

You're not going to leave.

Don't do it.

Don't leave me here.

Not again.

Unconsciously, his fingers had curled into fists.

...

The old man held his stare for a few moments, then sighed.

"You should stay."

"Yeah, probably."

There was another sigh.

"Very well."

The old man turned to the nurse, and bowed slightly, out of habit as well as courtesy.

"Nurse," he said in German, "I'm afraid I have to request the patient be discharged. There is a matter we have to attend to."

…

Kanda watched the trains go by, rattling along the tracks. The look on his face was bored, almost blank, contrasting with his typical sullenness.

"What time is it?" he asked, rattling off the words almost robotically. The clock tower was out of sight, after all.

"Eleven fifty-six."

Marie listened to the clangs of steel on steel and the whistling of steam. Then the squealing of metal without enough grease.

"Tiedoll'd better come back soon. That bastard's gonna waste too much time."

Marie looked shocked, as much as was possible behind his glasses.

"Kanda–!"

Kanda shook his head.

"Daisya, I mean."

Had he been able to see, a splash of colour would have caught Marie's eye. As normal, Kanda was fidgeting.

Not quite as normal, his fingernails bit into his skin hard enough to draw blood.

"He's wasted too much of our time."

Kanda's words were without emotion. Had they been spoken though gritted teeth, Marie would have felt far more at ease.

"It has been days since we left — a few hours can't make too much difference," he said comfortingly, "Anyway, the General said we should leave as soon as he wakes up — we don't have to bring him along."

"Still."

Something else seemed to be on Kanda's mind. The fire had probably upset him, linking back to the wretched childhood Marie had only glimpsed.

"Don't worry. We'll be in time."

…

Well, the bandages would take some getting used to, but Daisya thought he was pretty lucky overall. No broken bones, no nothing. Sure he was hyped up on some drug they said came from opium, but the old man said the nurse gave them enough to get them through a week or so. Anyway, everyone knew that opium gave you good dreams. All you had to do was keep moving.

And that wouldn't be a problem because geez, was the old man was in a hurry. What was the occasion?

Well, probably some more dead finders, but that was their _job_.

I mean, it's never nice to die, but some people just do. A few hours don't make any difference.

Oh, well. The old man probably thinks it does.

Daisya skipped on one foot, and broke into a run to keep up. The train station was just a few minutes away.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To answer a couple of questions before moving on: Kanda and Daisya are about 11 and 12 respectively in this part of the fic. The wiki's a bit vague, so I thought that Kanda and Daisya were the same age when I wrote it, but it appears the general consensus is that Daisya is a year older than Kanda. I haven't been able to find out when Kanda got out of the testing facility and got apprenticed to Tiedoll, so that affects things a bit. Marie would be 21, and because I failed to check the wiki before mentioning bits, Lenalee went through her confinement when she was 7, and not 9. Hopefully that clears that bit up.
> 
> You can skip this next bit, but it's to elucidate some of the bits I can't be bothered to write in: I have a policy of 'screw the dgm timeline, I'm making up my own'. This one is nearly identical to the original, except for the following: everything is two years earlier. Kanda returned to the Black Order just before Tiedoll picked up Daisya, age 11. Daisya stayed with Tiedoll for basically a year (this takes place about a year after Tiedoll found him) and Lenalee got released before Daisya came to the Order. From then on things happen at the proper time (Lavi will come to the order when Kanda's 16, etc.). Probably.
> 
> And about what Tiedoll does between apprentices, I believe it would probably be tantamount to exterminating akuma and driving off Noahs. Lower-level exorcists can take care of small numbers of akuma and fetch Innocence fairly easily, but I think that the Generals would be used for the most difficult tasks, such as infiltrating Noah territory, fighting Noahs, and taking out villages of akuma and more. Considering the sheer amount of akuma in existence, that would number in the thousands or tens of thousands. So, while Tiedoll looks like a harmless old man, he would be a person of mass destruction as his day job.
> 
> Anyhow, I'm sorry to say that the writing will be a bit lower in quality from now on, though it should remain correctly spelled. Also, the reason I use 'akuma' instead of 'demon' is because I just have a really hard time thinking of 'demon' and envisioning a big metal shell with guns, so using 'akuma' allows me to keep only one set of connotations in mind. But that's fairly irrelevant, for now...
> 
> The final part of the chapter can be read any way you please, but I wrote it as different pieces coming together to make a picture that you wouldn't expect, but that's still there. Like a math equation. You wouldn't expect 1 - (-1) to be 2, but that doesn't change what it is. Either way, please read, enjoy, and review, hopefully in that order.

Another train ride. Great. They were getting really boring.

Daisya took a breath.

"H–"

"No."

Kanda anticipated his suggestion. Where Daisya was staring out the window, Kanda was sitting opposite him, and as close to the door as possible. He hadn't moved a muscle.

He didn't even look annoyed. Just bitterly angry.

"We should probably sleep today," Marie said quietly, shooting a look at Kanda, "Last night was long. We shouldn't waste any more time."

Daisya kept his mouth shut. Marie was right. But he wasn't the one kicking up a fuss over nothing — Kanda shouldn't even have been affected by the fire. He was an exorcist. They dealt with worse stuff all the time.

 _He_ was fine, even when he was the one who got all burnt up. Kanda should have been good in about ten seconds. Even if he'd sprained his ankle, or something, it wouldn't be too hard to grab some medicine and a pair of crutches and get moving. He hadn't even done that. Daisya was watching him, and he didn't move like he was hurt, or anything. He was fine. Should have been fine.

But there was something that had happened — maybe he had to jump some other time, or maybe someone made him jump.

Daisya had a feeling that "Alma" had something to do with it. Anyone important enough for Kanda to actually remember them had to be something. Though, to know who Alma must have been would mean to know Kanda — a thing whose impossibility had drawn Daisya to him in the first place.

So…

Who's Kanda?

Or, and this was important, who was Kanda?

Daisya could remember a lot of things, if he wanted to. But he never wanted to, so why bother?

Kanda was around his age. So, within a year or two of twelve.

Kanda didn't mention any family — then again, neither did he, and neither had most of the others he'd overheard. The eight-year-old was the only one who talked about it, and even then it was just her brother.

So, if he had family, they were irrelevant. And, from his behaviour, pretty weak or preoccupied. He took care of himself pretty well, anyway. Daisya doubted he'd bother rebelling against anything, too, so his parents must not have enforced sophistication in the first place.

That was family taken care of. Nothing too special.

Background. Hometown. He looked Japanese, but he didn't talk with much of an accent. Maybe he was just good at languages, but who knew. And he didn't have any cultural thingies — habits, that was the word — per se. Home probably didn't figure much in his mind.

Home, on the other hand, was something to Daisya. Yeah, it was mostly just a place to get away from, but no one else in the order came from a godforsaken desert town, so it was something to be a bit proud of. It was why he hated boring things so much. If you lived in Bodrum for ten years, you wanted to spend the rest of your life high on — what's it called again? Oh, yeah, adrenaline. Anyway, you wanted the rest of your life to be _really_ exciting, no matter how long or short you end up living 'cos of that. That was probably wrong, but English was weird when it came to idioms.

So. Home. Kanda didn't care much about home. Didn't talk, didn't tell, didn't show.

No home, no family. What the hell else was there?

He didn't play soccer, so there weren't any teammates. No neighbourhood kids. They were boring, but they were something.

Maybe he had a friend, or something. But that would be pretty rare, finding someone who didn't drive Kanda up the wall by just being there.

So, who fit the criteria?

Let's see…there's the little girl, the old man, and Marie.

It was hard not to like the girl, from what he'd seen. Didn't talk too much, didn't do too much. Same with Marie. You couldn't find anything particularly wrong with the two of them. They just sat there, and said nice things. Things that made too much sense.

And there was something about Marie. Daisya had sort of noticed it, but he hadn't quite been able to put a finger on it before.

Well, this train was pretty slow, and time wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

Time to figure it out.

What did Marie do?

He was helpful. He carried the bags, looked for places to stay, and mediated when he and Kanda were feeling a bit cramped. Sometimes he tried to keep the conversations going, and sometimes he tried to stop 'em.

He tried to fit in, and he tried to compensate for Kanda being himself, sometimes.

Yeah, that was it. He tried to keep the conversations going if Kanda was in a good mood.

He had a soft spot for Kanda — maybe they were a bit like brothers, the way it was supposed to be. Not like his siblings. They whined and whined and whined and the moment he left they pretended they were perfect. Hah. Not a chance, kids, not a chance. He wasn't going to go back, not even if it killed him.

Daisya left off the tangent again. So, Marie. From what he could see, Kanda didn't yell at him too much. Or at all, really.

But we've got no one to compare him too, 'cause the little girl's too cute to have competition. The old man, maybe? Kanda seems to like him. Or respect him, at any rate. He's good at what he does, and he doesn't yell at Kanda. And he trained him.

Daisya's ass had been unceremoniously saved too many times when he was stuck with the old man, so he took a guess. Kanda probably wasn't perfect, either.

So the old man was nice to him and helped him out. Which meant that Marie probably did the same thing.

But they didn't just meet at lunchtime at the Order, or something. They were a bit too friendly for that.

So sometime back before. That was that solved, as far as Daisya could know.

And then what's left is personality. Character, you know. The kids all said his sucked, but he'd like to see them say that after meeting Kanda.

Kanda didn't like to talk.

Kanda didn't like to get talked at.

Kanda was sort of okay with games, or anything small and brainless, as long as he was in control.

Kanda liked being in control.

Kanda was annoyed just like he was bored or preoccupied — all the time, not meaning to, just as a way to live

So maybe there was something that had made him become like that. Or maybe he had been born that way, and become more like that.

Kanda wasn't as extreme as most people thought, though. He did what he could, when he could. He — what's that word, yeah that one — he adapted. He'd lied for him, and he'd been sort of neutral. Not friendly, yeah, but not that mean.

Kanda was a kid who carried his world with him. Nothing else really mattered.

That is who Kanda was back then, and still was now.

But…all that aside, that's just what he was. Who Kanda _is_ is a bit different.

The answer to that wasn't a list of things about the kid.

Daisya carried his world with him, too, so he tried to answer the question.

Hey, who's Kanda?

The trees flew by the train, albeit more slowly than before, and the blurred movement sometimes gave an outline to tableaux — places where the gaps in the leaves blended together to form a shape.

The answer was so obvious it almost appeared out there, spelled out by the universe, or maybe God.

Kanda's a friend.

Well…

Kanda's a kid. He doesn't make much sense. He's annoyed a lot. And angry. Kanda yells at most people, except the old man, the little girl, and the blind guy. But most of the time he's quiet. You can never tell what he's thinking.

Kanda's interesting. And exciting. The opposite of boring.

He'll never tell you anything about himself, so you shouldn't bother making friends with him. He'll just yell at you.

You'll never know anything about him.

He's just Kanda.

But there's so much more to it than that, and I'll never know.

But I want to know. I want to try and find out who Kanda was.

I'm going to find out who Kanda was.

I'm not going to leave him alone until I'm satisfied.

I can't leave him alone until I'm satisfied.

I want to stay with him.

There's only one other person I've met that I want to stay with. There'll be some more, yeah, but for now Kanda's a pretty rare subject.

So, if a friend is someone who makes you happy just by existing, then yeah.

Kanda's a friend.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you eight or so have probably realized, this is the point where I was laying the railroad tracks under my feet as I was writing, so I may take a bit longer to update, because I may decide to write some new material to fill the gap. Anyhow, if anyone wants me to include anything - a character, ship, whatever - drop me a line because I'm starved for ideas. I'm planning on keeping this thing gen (for a given value of gen), but that doesn't mean I can drop a line or two here and there among minor characters. Thanks to all who reviewed, by the way. You guys keep this thing posting.
> 
> Yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah, read and review. Read and review. Write me an eighth-grade English report on the possible reasoning behind any odd or ooc-seeming behaviour. Put words that are yours on a page that is available as a link off of this story and is titled 'comments.' Just arrange words in a meaningful manner, as I'm attempting to do on a slightly larger scale.

The sun was slipping down the sky, and Tiedoll would have liked to sketch it. The colours — orange and pink, fading to grey — were nothing special, but what made it breathtaking was the arrangement of the sun beside the railroad tracks, framed by hills as the train left the mountains. The spread of light between the clouds on the horizon resembled an eye, looking over the rising plains.

Alas, he couldn't bring himself to wake Kanda, who had, oddly enough, fallen asleep.

He had looked a bit tired, recently.

But odder still was Daisya's apparent thoughtfulness — despite the demands of his body, he still staring out the window, as if watching something.

Well, that was quite the improvement. He seemed to be on the path to growing up — or at least learning to deal with his own situation.

Tiedoll looked around again, and had to suppress a laugh. The roles in the cabin had switched almost perfectly.

Perhaps Daisya and Kanda weren't so different — though that was, of course, the most wishful of thinking.

…

The scream of metal made Daisya wince as the train pulled away, bound for the next stop. This platform was just a raised set of wood planks, despite the size of the town it served. Maybe funds were running low. Maybe this was a shanty town. It was too late to think about.

Daisya gingerly shouldered his backpack, relaxing his muscles in order not to wince. The bandages helped, but the warmth of the morphine was wearing off.

"Hey, old man, what are we doing now?"

Tiedoll glanced back. It had been over twelve hours since they were at the hospital, and the unusual softness in Daisya's voice suggested that he might be feeling his injuries.

"We're just going to see if we can get anywhere tonight, or if we have to stay here."

"Same as always."

Daisya sounded bored again.

"Well, we should be able to get somewhere soon. First, we have to have something to eat. You need to keep your strength up. And you should probably take some more medication."

"Yeah, yeah," groaned Daisya, more for show than out of any resentment, "I know."

The old man was pretty good at guessing.

…

The inns all seemed to blend together, after a while. Twenty metres square, at least, with a small bar against one wall that led back to the kitchen. A staircase on the side, narrow and wobbly, and rooms up above. Wood-panelled walls, wooden or dirt floors, wood tables and chairs. No wonder the fire in Budapest had spread so fast. And the tables and chairs were always too high, but the seats were too low. Didn't do too well for you if you were short. Your legs kept losing circulation.

Around the table, Marie and Daisya dug in, the latter with a more creative technique so as not to put any pressure on his bandaged fingers.

At this point he had the entirety of his meal into bits and was eating it with a spoon. Marie had shot him a questioning glance, but no more than that. It wasn't worth arguing. They were all as tired as each other.

Not so with Kanda. He had pushed himself back from the table, despite his plate being nearly full. It had taken him a few tries, what with him being short.

"That's disgusting."

Across from him, Daisya shrugged, then winced.

"It's fun."

"It's unnecessary."

Kanda's arms were folded, but an observer could see that the fingers visible had tightened around his arm.

" _Your_ fingers don't hurt whenever you hold something."

Daisya shoved another spoonful in his mouth, earning a sigh of disgust.

"Anyway," he muttered around the current mouthful, "You gonna eat that?"

He pointed a mummified finger at Kanda's meal. The meat and potatoes were both as grey as the wood lining the walls, but they were edible.

"Go ahead."

In an uncharacteristic act of neutrality, Kanda pushed the plate forward.

"Awesome!"

Daisya's hand sneaked out, pulling the plate back with the speed of a snake.

"Are you even hungry enough to eat that?" Kanda asked doubtfully.

Daisya looked up incredulously, and rolled his eyes before putting his head back down.

"No, of course not. I just need a lot of material if I'm gonna heal up."

The wooden cutlery worked lightly but steadily, clacking against the plate and occasionally the table when Daisya got a bit careless.

But instead of retaliating at the dismissive tone, Kanda just looked away. Had Marie sight, he would have noticed the circles around his eyes growing darker than their normal shade, even with how tired they all were. Even with his blindness, he could hear the inaudible groan, and feel Kanda looked away, as if sickened. Some things you could feel, regardless of what you could see.

His train of thought was interrupted by Tiedoll's arrival at the table.

"We'll have to stay here for the night," the General said quietly, pulling up a chair, "There's no train until morning. We can stay here, though. I took a couple of the free rooms just down the corridor."

As he began to eat, Kanda stood up, the legs of his chair grating across the floor.

"We need to be prepared for tomorrow. I'm going to sleep."

He glared at the occupants of the table defensively, but Tiedoll's look of mild surprise lasted only a moment.

"Yes, that is a good idea," he commented, putting a key on the table, "We should all rest up tonight."

Kanda's hand slid over, snapping up the keys. Not even bothering to shoot a glare at Daisya in his slovenliness, he left.

Daisya watched him go down the hallway before swallowing.

"What's up with him?" he asked, half to himself.

He didn't quite notice the tired glance Tiedoll gave to Marie. They were both a bit forgetful.

…

The three of them stood outside the door as if in council, hesitating to move.

"If he's asleep, we probably shouldn't wake him up," whispered Marie.

"But we won't know that until we open the door," Tiedoll added with a trace of irony, "A situation not unlike Schrodinger's Cat."

"Well, if he was that tired," reasoned Daisya, "It's fine if we wake him up, 'cause he'll just fall back asleep. He's a pretty deep sleeper, isn't he?"

Marie frowned.

"No, not as far as I can remember. Not unless he's dreaming, which doesn't happen much."

"Oh."

Daisya shrugged, immediately regretting the movement. Marie looked thoughtful, and Tiedoll put his hands together.

"Perhaps we should just share the remaining room. I'm sure there's enough room for the three of us."

Daisya looked quickly at his apparent roommates, shrugged again, and winced again. Tiedoll wondered if he would ever learn.

"I'm tired. I'll sleep on the floor."

…

The sun shone through the windows, landing squarely on Daisya's pile of blankets. In the middle of the grey, wood-planked floor, it was as if a mountain of discarded laundry had made a bid for freedom, before being petrified by the morning light. The face revealed was certainly grotesque enough.

"Aargh."

He pulled a quilt over his head, trying to block out the sun. And the morphine was wearing off again. Every movement burned.

Daisya screwed up his face in distaste. There was nothing for it but getting up — the sun wasn't going anywhere.

"Old man."

He staggered to his feet, picking off a sheet that had somehow wound around three of his limbs. His teeth were gritted as his clothes grated on his skin. After a moment, he was able to disentangle his wrist, but the result tightened the rest of the cloth around his ankles, resulting in a fall from grace.

After a resounding thud and a gasp, he picked himself back up. Kanda _had_ to have chosen the most inconvenient time to dream, didn't he.

"What is it, Daisya?"

The voice cut through the haze, and Daisya's vision refocused.

The old man was sitting on the bed, fully dressed and sketching, again. How he managed to get up that early Daisya could only guess at, but it was getting boring.

"Got any more drugs?" he asked roughly. "The old ones wore off."

He turned back, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with the defeated sheet.

Fold it?

A moment later, while he was kicking the pile of linen into a neater heap, a hand was outstretched with a couple of tablets. He grabbed them, without thanks or acknowledgement. A flaw of his, to add to many.

Dragging himself over to the washbasin, he filled a glass of water and swallowed. His throat was still sore, but it was getting better. Now, that was done. What else?

He decided he'd better wash his face, but immediately regretted it when he ran the facecloth over his skin.

He'd had some pretty bad sunburns before, but between the blisters and peeling skin, this one outdid them all by far.

Eeugh. Now his skin was coming off. Now that was just _nasty_.

He started to rewrap his bandages as Marie folded sheets behind him. Around the jawbone, covering as much of the cheeks as possible, over the head, and down the neck. His exorcist's cloak had a hood, thankfully, but it still didn't cover all of it. And his fingers still didn't work as well as they should.

Damn, this was turning out to be a lot more of a problem than he'd thought.

Which made it more exciting.

He wound the bandages down, around his chest and then his legs. A couple of pricked fingers and swears later, the old man decided he'd best pin down some of the ends himself.

Yeah, it was painful, but pain was the one sign that you were alive.

...

Kanda, unexpectedly, wasn't awake before them, and Daisya was the sacrificial victim. The other room was a ways down the hallway, and he grumbled as he dragged himself along. He didn't see why the old man couldn't send Marie. Kanda might actually listen to _him_. And then they'd all have breakfast quicker. He was starving. _Starving_. Maybe if he was lucky Kanda'd give him some of his share, but you couldn't count on kindness from that kid more than once.

Funny. After a while these hallways all tended to blend into one. There was a lot of wood. Sometimes there was stone, and plaster. This one was half-timber, with a tiny bit of white at the end of the hallway, and pitch-dark wood around the window there. The rest of it - walls, floors, doors - was the same old grey-brown they'd seen for the last two weeks. At least there was some morning sun streaming on to the floor.

Ah, here we are.

He gritted his teeth, turned to face the door, and kicked it.

"Kanda," he called, "'s time for breakfast."

He waited a few seconds, staring at the glue between the planks making up the door and waiting for the obligatory groan.

No answer. Kanda didn't seem to be feeling too co-operative today. Actually, scratch that - that was normal. Oh, well, nothing for it.

He kicked the door again, then hissed in pain, hopping back on his remaining foot. It'd seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Hey, Kanda, wake up!"

Again, he stared at the wood, trying to see if there were any knotholes that let in light. He was damned if he wasn't going to get some breakfast soon.

After a few seconds and another shout, he heard some equivalent hissing from the room one over for him to be quiet. He ignored it. They could sleep later, if they wanted.

Daisya kicked the door again, muttering a string of swears through clenched teeth, then looked a bit more closely to see if there were any openings in the door, or if the hinges were just a bit offset. As bad luck would have it, the keyhole was tiny and the knots were all solid wood. Couldn't a tree just _try_ and make some useful ones?

Now he had to do the boring thing, and peek underneath the door. It made you look a bit of an idiot, but the door was locked and breakfast was getting more distant by the minute.

Beneath the door, the space was too thin to make out any detail beyond the presence of light. However, the line of cloth running about forty centimetres across was enough to show that yes, Kanda was awake, and no, he wasn't coming out for breakfast.

What was _with_ that kid. Daisya'd thought he'd have him figure out by now, but as he crossed his legs he decided that he'd have to have another go.

Maybe Alma had something to do with it, whoever she was.

Daisya spoke through the door again, this time sitting at its base. The light was starting to reach further down the hallway, making the dust dance in the air.

"Kanda, if you don't come out now, I don't think you're going to get breakfast."

No answer, again, but he was sure that Kanda had heard him. He fancied he could hear the breathing through the door.

"Not hungry again?"

Silence.

"Oh, just do one knock for yes and two knocks for no, will ya?"

Two knocks.

Daisya grinned. Typical. The sun was on him now, warm and golden and streaming across the wooden planks. The old man had said the windows made it that way, but he couldn't understand why. Anyway, it felt good.

"Well, I'm not gonna wait for you. Want me to bring you a plate of something?"

No answer again, but one belligerent response was enough to keep Daisya happy.

"Bo-ring."

He hopped to his feet, wincing where the linen scraped his skin, and set off back to the table. The dragon wasn't going to come out today, not even for a designated sacrifice.

Maybe tomorrow.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive the change in writing style, but I was probably reading a book with a different writing style when I was writing this. Otherwise, read and review, and preferably criticize.

Daisya had grabbed a few pieces of toast and some dried sausage, and was stuffing them into a pocket of his backpack.

"You certainly have quite the appetite today," commented Tiedoll, amused.

"Yeah," said Daisya, a hint of defense in his voice, "Well we have to fight soon. Kanda's stupid to waste energy."

He tied the pocket shut, and slung the bag over his back. The morefing or morphing or whatever was working again, so it didn't hurt. Much.

Once Marie had fetched Kanda, who apparently was feeling sick (Daisya didn't buy it), they made their way to where Tiedoll had said there was a coach for hire. People didn't travel much here, but this town and their destination were pretty big for the area.

At least it was a break from trains, though they did stay pretty exciting for a while.

...

The coachman in question, when they arrived, was a timid-looking youth in a shabby hat. He nearly blended in with the road. They really seemed to like brown out here, for some reason that escaped Daisya. It was boring.

"I have it ready, General," the guy said in passable German, "But are you still sure you want to go? My grandmother says you really should stay here for the circus, at least."

Tiedoll waved a hand reassuringly.

"We have relatives to visit, so I don't really have a choice. My mother-in-law, you know. And the circus is going where we're headed, isn't it?"

He chuckled to put the kid at ease, but he still looked worried.

"People don't really go there anymore. At least, they don't come back."

He was fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve.

"My granny says she really thinks you should stay here."

Tiedoll decided to forestall the next protest by stepping towards the coach — or rather, cart.

"Then I'll give your granny my regards when we get back."

He patted the youth on the back jovially, then climbed into the cart. The three in tow followed, with Kanda throwing a customary glare at the teenager as he passed.

Tiedoll felt a bit sorry for him — Kanda had been in a worse mood than usual, with his sickness. He suspected it was just a reaction to the fire. Kanda, for all his complaining, had quite the saviour complex. In addition, of course, to everything else.

Tiedoll didn't know the whole story, but what he knew was enough to know that a year and a few months was only barely enough for the memories to scab over, ready to bleed at a moment's notice.

And so a farm cart (whose days were certainly numbered, the way the wheels squeaked) full of exorcists — one old, one blind, one angry, and one terminally giggle-prone — rattled down the rutted road.

Daisya ran the sentence through his mind again. Yeah, that was good. Alliteration, the old man had said it was.

…

Daisya had gotten out the toast, offered some to Kanda, and began to dig in rather messily when the gift was refused.

"Now," said the General quietly, "We may have a little more difficult of a situation on our hands than with Innocence."

"Like what?" asked Kanda, leaning as far away from Daisya as possible.

"Well, as you know, finders can normally hold their own for a while against a few akuma. So it's a little mysterious that they got wiped out this quickly. I had my suspicions, but Marie and I paid a visit to an acquaintance of mine while we were in Budapest. Just to be sure, of course."

An unspoken, almost tangible sentiment rippled between Kanda and Daisya.

_So that's where you were._

"Anyway, we went over a few possibilities. We're probably dealing with a town of akuma."

Kanda sat up straighter.

"How is that possible?" he asked suspiciously, "Akuma just seek out the closest Innocence. You can't create that many akuma in one area in that amount of time."

The General and Marie glanced at each other, almost to quickly for him to notice.

"There have been…some instances. In any case, it's more likely than some of the other possibilities. And it could happen if someone was brokering the souls."

"Mmf–"

Daisya had to swallow before trying to talk again.

"Brokering souls? Aren't they already broken?"

The General laughed. Daisya was talented with languages, but he still made the occasional mistake. Or perhaps it was because he was nigh-on drugged into a stupor — it wasn't quite morphine, as he had said, but something he'd had on him for emergencies. The scientists had warned him about using it on the less sharp.

"No, no. 'Brokering' is sort of a way of saying 'selling'. The Earl sometimes uses human agents to create more akuma. They convince people to call back souls in exchange for money."

"That's terrible. It's smart, though. Sure you don't want any?"

Kanda leaned away again.

"I already told you, I'm not hungry."

"You've eaten, like, half a potato and some cabbage since lunch yesterday."

"I'm sick."

"My mother always said you should eat more when you're sick to help heal."

"Yeah, right."

"Well, it makes sense."

"Shut up."

"Eat the damn toast."

" _Shut up_."

The two seemed to have take a few seconds to continue their semi-permanent argument about everything.

"Daisya–"

The pitch in the General's voice wasn't strict, but it did hint that there were matters of slightly more import at hand than the state of Kanda's appetite and Daisya's tact, regardless of chemical stimulants or otherwise.

"Regardless of how it happened, we are, in all likelihood, going to a town full of akuma. The Order has not considered it, but there may not even be any Innocence if the Earl has any motive for creating the situation. Which means that we may have no way out after we enter the town. In that case, we have to kill enough akuma to escape."

The General finished the sentence, then looked to Marie, as if prompting further explanation.

"We thought–"

"You thought–"

"Sorry, I thought that we could try to interrogate the akuma first. If there isn't a broker and there isn't any Innocence, that means that there was some reason the Earl ordered this. It could be something different…"

He trailed off awkwardly, and the General stepped in.

"See, that wasn't so hard! I had just thought about going all-out at first, but Marie thought that, seeing as you two need some experience, we might as well collect some information."

Marie, for all his six-some feet and broad shoulders, managed to look sheepish.

The General smiled, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"So, for your part, just act like the adorable children you are. And please don't wear your exorcist cloaks unless I ask you to."

"We're not adorable," muttered Kanda darkly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine Tiedoll would be trying to get stereotypically-nervous-teenager Marie to start speaking more assertively. Also Kanda's odd behaviour is a combination of him being himself and low-level something or other triggered by events that mirrored some things he'd rather just forget.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, feedback would be nice. The story gets a lot more inconsistent from now on, by the way, so beware.

"Oh, how cute!"

This innkeeper was a girl, regrettably so.

"Ah, aren't they? My sister was rather fond of them, before she passed on."

Kanda was of the opinion that Tiedoll was spinning as cliché a story as he could with the opportunity given to him. The innkeeper seemed to be buying it, at any rate.

At least she hadn't tried to touch him yet.

"What a pity about the parents. You said you're looking for their relatives?"

Tiedoll nodded.

"Yes, we've been looking for a while, but this village seems to be a candidate. I hear it's a rather special place. You do present evidence of its wonders."

The innkeeper, who was of about the same dimensions as Marie, blushed. Kanda used every ounce of willpower available to keep his face straight.

"Oh, you flatter me. We're really nothing special, we just sometimes get travellers. Not such as yourselves, but the ones that never stop travelling, you know," she said, waving a hand as if searching for a word, "Uh…"

"…nomads?"

"Yes, yes, that's the word. Like the circus! It's coming in a week, very exciting."

Tiedoll bowed slightly.

"Yes, we are quite looking forward to it, should we stay that long. I'm afraid we have to unload at the moment, but the children can keep you company in the meantime."

With another small bow — a habit of his, when he was trying to be especially polite — he left Kanda and Daisya to their mutual demise.

…

"Oh, and how did you get those tattoos?"

Half of Daisya was relishing in the attention, and the remaining half was cringing in his seat.

"Um…well, of course, I got them after the accident. As a memento of," he said, desperately laying tracks beneath a moving train, "Uh, my parents, and of home. Yeah. It's nice to have them around."

He smiled, and tried to ignore Kanda's sideways glance of disbelief and the kick in the shins he so generously offered.

"I guess I know how it feels," the innkeeper replied wistfully, "I lost…someone, I think. I can't quite remember it, because I was so young, but I still know it happened."

She apparently doubled as the bartender, and was busily cleaning glasses as the boys sat on the barstools, legs dangling beneath them.

"And how about you, do you have anything to help you remember?" she asked, addressing the question in a slightly more patronizing tone to Kanda.

Daisya noted that her sense of self-preservation was apparently as weak as her self-control in the area of chatting. If Marie wanted information, what they'd collected would take a week to sort through. At least she hadn't asked about the burns, even though the old man had explained them away with the accident. He had a feeling Kanda wouldn't react so kindly to them being brought up.

Speaking of which, he wasn't reacting so kindly to the question now. Daisya smiled, trying to communicate that maybe this was not the time to snap.

Kanda seemed to have gotten some of the message at least.

"I just remember sometimes. That's all," he muttered, managing to keep any emotion out of his voice.

"All right, but you must remember once in a while. It's important to remember everything that happens, if it's good or bad," said the innkeeper cheerfully.

Her German was tainted slightly with an accent, but as time went on Daisya was pretty sure it wasn't Magyar. The old man and Marie were probably the experts, but he had his own set of skills.

Up to and including keeping an entirely straight face as he listened to Kanda's replies.

…

The dust that Daisya kicked up settled in the still air, turning golden as the sun dropped closer to the horizon.

He drove the ball around, controlling it when he suddenly turned at a right angle or more, and occasionally driving it at the wall of the inn. He'd managed to get used to the pain of moving, and the old man still gave him enough painkillers to knock someone out. Sometimes he was pretty sensible, you know?

He ran around again, but it was pretty boring after a while if no one wanted to play. The hard-packed dirt of the courtyard jarred his ankles more than grass, but less than stone.

He ran back, circled around, and aimed the ball at a set of shutters.

It bounced off with a clatter. This was to be expected, as was the lack of a response.

He went around again, and again, listening to the clatters and their echoes and watching the dust motes. Target practice, he reasoned, was the most important thing when you were fighting.

Eventually, Kanda opened the shutters, and yelled down at him.

"Would you _shut up_?"

Daisya shaded his eyes from the glare in the west, and called back.

"Wanna play with me?"

"No."

The shutters snapped closed, and Daisya had no choice but to hit them again.

"I told you, _no_."

Kanda glared down at him again.

"Hey, a boy can dream!" Daisya said back, shrugging, "I guess you'll just have to put up with my lack of practice once we start fi–"

He cut himself off, remembering that they were supposed to be quiet about the whole exorcist thing.

Thanks to Kanda's ever-so-persistent refusal, he had but one option remaining.

"Please?"

He was expecting another scoff, sigh, or whatever, but he didn't get a sound. Kanda just looked at him.

There was something in his eyes he'd seen before. The same ghost as when he was standing on the windowsill as the flames worked their way towards the kerosene.

The dust settled, and Daisya didn't bother to wince as the light streamed past his fingers. Something else held his attention. Someone else. Someone in Kanda's eyes.

He looked at Daisya like he'd caused the very destruction of the world. This was Kanda, so that softened it a bit, but still.

What did he ever have against a bit of politeness?

Daiysa returned to kicking the ball in zigzags as the shutters slammed with what had to be enough force to shake the building.

…

The chords were faint, but the harmony when they shifted was calming when quieter, Marie had discovered.

He slipped from C sharp minor into A major, into B major and back to C sharp, adding an F sharp to suspend it.

C sharp minor was the key of emotion, of burning grief mixed with absolute joy. And when played quietly, it exuded a warm type of melancholy. Its twin, D flat major, was no less beautiful, but its tone was milder and more bittersweet.

He shifted again, and again, slowly modulating through E major to F sharp minor — a similar key, but with a more mysterious timbre.

To D, to E, to C sharp minor, then to A.

He couldn't decide whether to use a major or a minor, at the moment.

He was not sad, nor angry, though there was no sense of self-centred joy in it. So, if it were in a minor key, the tempo would not veer above an allegretto, or perhaps a moderato.

Kanda and Daisya, despite the odds, had neither killed each other nor died — yet. And the General seemed to be in a good mood. But there was still the aura of tension around Kanda, and the fact remained that they were dallying where people had disappeared.

The music would not be stately, if it were slow. Not solemn — it would require a certain melancholic tension no matter what the tempo.

He moved one note, anticipating the chord, and then slid into G sharp minor.

But were it not for the logistics of the post of 'exorcist', he would be entirely happy. Kanda was having fun, for lack of a better word, and the General had his students back.

And he could play the role of mentor.

The key spliced together B major and G sharp minor, before ending in E major.

The night was warm, and quiet without the General and Daisya. To respect it, Kanda waited until the final glimmers of sound had died away.

"We're not really here to collect information, are we?"

Marie let the strings retract. His Innocence suited him — innocuous, but strong.

"In a way," he replied, honesty warring with logic.

"There's no point to just waiting to die. It doesn't matter if they know we're exorcists — they'll try to kill us anyway."

"Yes. We are trying to seem innocent. If they don't know who we are, they won't be prepared."

There was a sliding noise as Kanda presumably shifted position.

"They probably already suspect we're exorcists. They should have known we'd come eventually."

Marie nodded.

"Yes. The General just says that, at worst, the effect will be the same as if we announced ourselves."

Kanda made a derisive noise.

"Except we'll just be less prepared. Daisya hasn't even guessed what we're doing."

Kanda was on edge — Marie could hear the tension in his voice.

But there were no further counter-arguments.

It, like most of the General's moves, was a risk. Nonetheless, he was an experienced gambler — he had survived this long, after all.

…

"I've got to say, I'm going to avoid doing laundry as much as I can for as long as I live. If boredom was a thing, it would be laundry," called Daisya from the window.

He finished squeezing the last of the water out of the bandage, then wandered back to the scrap of a shaving-mirror, standing right next to Kanda to force him out of the way.

"Well, you're either going to have to get used to it, or just shut up about it."

Kanda stepped a few inches away, but no more than that, keeping a bit of the mirror for himself. He slowly picked a comb through the ends of his hair, which had become so knotted as to become solid.

"Yeah, yeah. Or I could just not wash anything while I'm on a mission."

Kanda scoffed.

"You already don't clean them much, and you stink."

"If you cared that much about it you'd have brought it up earlier," retorted Daisya, contorting himself in an effort to re-wrap a bandage around his shoulders.

"I had to get through everything else first."

Daisya chuckled, now winding the strip of cloth around his neck.

"What's so funny?" asked Kanda suspiciously

"Ah, nothing. That was a nice line, by the way."

Kanda said nothing, dragging the comb through a patch of hair.

Silence continued for a few more moments as Daisya finished covering up the burns on his head, securing the bandage with a safety pin.

"Well," he said cheerfully, "Almost a day in, and no one's tried to kill us yet."

The comment was not without sardonicism, and Kanda briefly considered the possibility of Daisya being observant before dismissing it. The kid tidying up around the mirror was not a candidate for the title of 'perceptive', with his stupid grins and penchant for chattering.

He started picking at another patch of hair, adding to the clump that was collecting beside the mirror. He liked long hair, but nothing was more tedious that combing it after a few days of neglect.

A few minutes later, his eyes landed upon a distinct space beside the mirror, and he nearly broke the comb in a moment of mild rage.

…

"Give it back."

Daisya was ninety-six percent sure that there was no way to get out of Kanda's straddle without dislocating at least on joint.

"I don't– aaaargh, don't do that, I've got burns, you know!"

Kanda lessened up the pressure.

"Give me back my hair tie. I know you took it."

"Okay, okay. Get off me first, at least!"

"No. You'll just run away."

"Promise!"

There was a moment of cold consideration, and Kanda relented.

"There will be no mercy if you escape."

Odd words to be spoken in that high a voice, but they served their purpose.

Daisya got up gingerly, holding out the alleged piece of string.

"Either this is really important, or you're more violent than that Cross dude the old man talks about."

Kanda snatched back the article, and tied his hair back in a ponytail.

"I can't fight without a hair tie," he muttered defensively

"I think I could argue."

…

There was the thick silence of sleep — breathing patterns hung in the air, and blankets rustled on occasion, but the warm felt of drowsiness covered up most other sounds.

Despite that, Tiedoll kept both an eye and an ear on things.

It was pushing it, to be sure, but he still had enough medication to last for a few more days, and he'd gotten a good amount of sleep during the day. It was better to be safe.

Still, the sheets over him were enticingly comfortable, to his regret. If their hostess decided to pay them a visit, it would require some willpower to get up and greet her.

Nonetheless, his hands felt the outline of the Maker of Eden under his pillow, and caffeine-laced blood coursed through his brain, forestalling any chance of slipping off.

Now, to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify my (somewhat bad) writing choices: when I first watched/read DGM, I thought a major part of Kanda's character was a saviour complex, because he does do some slightly ooc stuff in the name of keeping people alive. Secondly, Kanda gets pushed off of things a lot (well, more than once) by people who laugh too much.
> 
> There's no explanation for the terrible purple prose. It's just there.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, action sequences and description, my weakest points, written late at night. It's definitely going to be a good chapter. Side note: I'm not trying to be edgy, I just took a name from the nearest person to hand who had a bit of Hungarian in them. It's easier than just looking them up.

Izabella had been a local girl, unlike some of the others here. But, in an unfortunate accident involving a cat, she had briefly been no more.

She'd helped run this tavern since she was five years old and blond-haired, cutting biscuits from dough to pass to her mother. The half-timber walls were her home, with the ceiling sagging over the bar counter and the tar-black joists that looked precariously balanced. She instinctively avoided the dip in the fifth stair, worn in the wood from years of wear. Even now, she did.

She set her foot on the sixth stair without missing a beat. It was a pity, because she'd enjoyed these ones. It had been a while since she could cook as she loved to do, and these unfamiliar arms had sorely needed the training. She remembered in the build-up to these weeks the joy of finally chopping an onion without slicing her fingers, and the glorious feeling of knowing the length of her legs and the balance of her head. Some of the older ones said they could remember that too, when they finally adapted to their current bodies.

The cat had been the next in a generation of the ones they kept around to clear out the mice and provide a bit of heat when the frost bit hard. This one had been a mackerel tabby, with orderly black stripes through brown fur and a suit-like patch of white down his throat, giving the air of some stuffy magistrate passing through. He was still very soft, though he was a bit more hostile with this body. He'd loved her old body so much that he'd twined around her ankles each morning.

The accident really had been unfortunate. She'd loved the hair she used to have, frizzy and dark as the wooden crossbeams. Her sister had straighter hair, strawberry blonde was what her mother called it. She might once have been jealous of that epithet, but the feeling seemed vague and unreal in this new reality. Her mother hadn't been around for a while, and she couldn't figure out if she had turned into dust or taken another skin. She hadn't seen either her mother's body or her father's, back when he died. They were distant memories now.

But not her sister.

Her sister had been kind enough to call her back, enabling her to carry out the Earl's wishes in the body of her unfortunate sibling. It felt a bit cruel, but ultimately using her sister was a kindness. She lived on in the sights of the travellers who passed by, and remained immortal as the last thing they saw. Izabella herself was just a messenger. An emissary of the true power in this world — not God but something similar. An entity in thirteen parts, the Lady called it, and chief among them was the Earl. They — she — he — all occupied her thoughts, entwined in the lesser memories of her home, her family.

Still, they did not rob her of her memories, merely superseding them. Her sister remained in the background of each new snippet of information, and she still remembered how soft, how cute the cat had been. She would have been happy to die at the hands of something exemplifying the virtues of innocence, of wide eyes. That was one thing that remained with her. Yes, it was unimportant, but she couldn't ignore all the childish beauty in the word. The cat, his compatriots, the immature bodies of some of her allies, the children she had shown upstairs. Particularly the way they played off each other, like the two cats that sparred in the courtyard beside the inn only to gang up on any passing dog. The symmetry merely added to the appeal of the idea; one hot, one cold, one light, one dark. One of the other akuma had explained the principles of yin and yang, of the eternal balance. She found that apropos.

In the stretch of light, there was a pool of darkness, and a bright star amidst the black.

The eighth and final step.

It pained her to have to exterminate them so callously, but the Earl and his kinsmen had the final word. Combustion was all that awaited disobedience. She had been ordered, even after her appeal, to continue. This supervising Lady wasn't so kind as some of the others - the Lord called the Fiddler was a piece of work — but she was kinder than some, so Izabella had decided to carry out the task quickly. After all, the Lady's springing step and her wide eyes complemented one another almost as well as did the children.

A low, heavy doorway, with the door hanging loose on its hinges. No new shipments of supplies had arrived since the town had been secured, so Izabella had been forced to do the best she could with string.

She walked soundlessly towards the older one. She had said to take that one out first, they'd said. He might not look it, but he's dangerous.

Two narrow beds at the back, against the wall on either side of the window. Two in front, on either side of the door. Bare wooden flooring, and pale cream walls spliced through with thick beams of black. Her home was beautiful.

Her human shape distorted as she leaned over the old man.

It would be difficult to explain what happened next, so to put it simply:

There was a brief moment as she panicked at the sight of movement.

There was a less brief flare of light. It glinted off the window and cast shadows that claw their way up the walls.

There was a distinct lack of Izabella — if the thing could have been called Izabella in the first place.

Tiedoll dusted his hands for the effect of it, and stood up.

Marie was a good child, but he was still a bit too trusting. The Order would not have sent the four of them there if resistance hadn't been an absolute certainty. The first rule the Generals learned was never to trust anyone. The second was to prepare for every possibility, up to and including death.

He wasn't as good at the first as Klaud, nor as good as Marian at adhering to the second. Still, he got by.

First, he woke Marie up, then Kanda, then Daisya. The latter necessitated a hand over the mouth, due to his habit of jabbering as soon as he entered consciousness.

"Mmf–"

Tiedoll put a finger to his lips, and removed his hand. The only light in the room filtered in the window from the moon, casting a shadow only Kanda's eyes could see. It was almost like a vigil, with the three of them hunched around Daisya's bed.

"I'm sorry, Daisya, but making noise is not a good idea at the moment," he whispered.

Daisya straightened up, glancing over the end of the bed where Marie had already laid out a coat and a pair of boots.

"It's way too early to leave," he complained in a whisper, "Did someone try to kill us, or something?"

As Kanda turned to grab a bag, Daisya gingerly slipped on to the floor. He wasn't wincing any more, but to be fair his doses of painkiller had been steadily increasing over the past two days. They needed all of them at full capacity.

"Precisely," replied Tiedoll.

"Hah!"

Daisya's stage whisper shouldn't have surprised the General. It was all he could do not to sigh.

"Do we finally get to fight something?"

"I'm afraid we might have no choice."

A few moments later, his three apprentices had donned their uniforms and come to a form of attention in front of him. After a few knocked shins, Daisya's eyes seemed to have adjusted to the darkness.

"We're going to see if there are any other akuma out there. Marie, please use your strings to test for them if there are none Kanda can see."

Marie nodded.

"If necessary, I'll split off from you three. In that case, stick together and don't worry about me. The town should be full of akuma. If worst comes to worst, run away. Remember: it's always better to live."

With the impromptu briefing, Tiedoll turned on his heel. He was sure none of his apprentices had noticed the faint grin that crossed his face. The Exorcist Generals were wise, yes, but the position was a military one.

And a little excitement wasn't so bad.

The four headed carefully for the front door, and Tiedoll opened it.

Almost casually, he thrust a hand full of Innocence in the face of the waiting akuma before walking out.

The stars were bright out here, tossed casually across the heavens. In the dark, the town was turned to stone in shades of steel and pearl grey. The sight would have been quite beautiful, if not for the rows upon rows of akuma that faced them.

Thankfully, the Maker of Eden provided a temporary shield from the hail of bullets. General Tiedoll was prepared.

"I think," he said thoughtfully, "We may have to split up. I'll go east. Marie?"

The other exorcist nodded. They knew the plan.

"Good luck in one…two…three…"

Tiedoll peeled off, running east down the dirt road towards the centre of town. He prayed quickly that, for a moment, Daisya would act sensibly. And Kanda, for that matter. The two of them were more alike than they were inclined to admit.

A sixth sense led him to throw up a shield just as dust sprayed up behind him

...

To the west, the grass grew longer and already Marie's strings played a symphony that distorted the spray of bullets. Diabolus in musica; the tritone that had once been condemned as unholy. Ironic, he thought, that it was now an instrument of God.

Kanda and Daisya had bitten into the swarm, the former slicing into the akuma Marie had bound, the latter aiming at the more distant ranks. A good position. Kanda covered him, and he could take out masses of akuma before they got to Kanda.

The ringing of a bell rolled out on top of the screaming strings, like the mourning of the insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least there are no other Daisya fanfics that I can compare unfavourably to.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features, again, clunky action and way too many paragraph breaks. Hopefully it's not too bad. The soundtrack I had in mind for most of it was from Moonspell's Night Eternal album, mostly the title track and Moon in Mercury. Some nice fine blackened gothic symphonic metal with death/doom influences. Metal bands do love their subgenres.
> 
> A few notes: I'm using akuma as a loan word, so its singular and plural forms are the same, and I'm capitalizing the Innocence names because while it looks weird and pretentious it just differentiates them.

"Geez," panted Daisya, "How many of these guys are there?"

He skidded around a tree, and kicked the Charity Bell up to make it ricochet off the tree ahead and fly backwards into the akuma chasing him. It wouldn't be enough to finish it off — he wasn't too good at that — but it would give him some time to catch his breath.

Kanda swept in beside him, only just breathing heavily. Some people got all the luck.

"Akuma don't need to eat or sleep," he snapped, "If the Earl wanted, he could fill the houses with akuma."

Around the western outskirts of the town, there was a thin copse of trees littered in a wide circle around a farmstead. It wasn't much. A few young oaks, a few elm, and some bushes stretching between them with spindly branches. It was further back that it thickened into a real forest, but for now they stayed around the fence. Mostly Marie had thought it better to have some cover that none. Daisya didn't care to admit that, as usual, he had a point.

Speaking of which, the shifting chords of the Organum were coming from somewhere behind them. It was difficult to stay together — if you waited for too long in one spot, you were dead in the water. Or in the forest. Or on the plains.

Now the trees were getting thicker as they started to retreat, with Marie ahead of them. Daisya stayed next to Kanda, playing long range under Kanda's cover. The system worked pretty well, so long as you could avoid the bullets, but Marie had made sure the akuma were nearly paralyzed.

Back pressed up against a tree trunk, Daisya listened for the ringing to stop. There was no need to watch Kanda, so it was best if he tried to defend himself. His eyes were only just beginning to adjust to the blackness. In the evening, everything's coloured blue and purple with a bit of gold, and in the morning it's mostly pink, but this midnight darkness was without any hint of colour. The grey-looking leaves were like ashes underfoot and massing clouds overhead, reflecting the faint glow of the battle.

The faint sound of wind whistling made Daisya jump out, facing the akuma as the Charity Bell flew at him. He immediately caught it on his foot, driving it into the approaching crowd. The akuma moved pretty slowly, and they looked pretty stupid doing it.

He turned and ran, finding an older-looking chestnut to hide behind before repeating the same movements, watching Kanda leap in after him. The kid seemed to know his way around a fight.

...

Now it was getting hard to see straight.

It was only about ten minutes later, but it makes a difference when you're running for your life. Around Daisya, the trees and bushes were forming an enclosure. There was a small clearing, then a path between trees and under branches back to where Marie was only just ahead of them, but not much to run to. As it was they were both backed up against a beech, catching breath before the next wave arrived.

Let's see...the plan was to get somewhere Marie could make a nice net. That should be about here. Then just finish them off. That's a bit easier said tha-

A bullet buried itself in the bark between his head and Kanda's, and his heart jumped into his throat. His eyes slid sideways, glancing at the splintered wood then back to the front.

The forest was closing in on him where the akuma weren't.

It was funny. He could feel his blood pounding in his ears from the fear, and he could taste metal in his throat from the exhaustion. Even Kanda was starting to slow down. But this came more easily than anything.

All this in a fraction of a second. His reflexes jerked into action, pulling him around the other side of the tree at the same time as Kanda. The akuma were still too far away to properly attack, so he darted forwards through the trees, only just managing not to trip over the nest of roots. Those things were damn annoying-

He stumbled into an elm-studded clearing, just barely stepping aside as Kanda barreled through.

Marie had finally stopped to lay the trap. Before Daisya could think further, Kanda immediately leapt away to rip into an akuma behind them.

Keep Marie safe for a few minutes, that was it. The plan. Kanda was already holding the gaps in the trees, blades flashing like a whirlwind. Now there were things there, attacking the akuma along side the sword. Tiedoll had mentioned something about calamities, but that was at the back of Daisya's mind.

There was something up with Kanda. He was impossibly good, but he was on edge. Daisya couldn't fathom it, but he seemed to think this was a chore.

He slashed sideways, missed, and rolled, avoiding stream of bullets before coming up in a stab.

It was beautiful, as was the blood-red harvest moon. It hung like an eye boiled in blood.

Marie had recovered his breath.

"So, are we going to stay here?" Daisya, still watching Kanda's show. Another akuma was approaching them.

"Yes. If I tie together some of the trees as well, I can incapacitate them all. You and Kanda can finish them off."

"Great, okay. So we're going to do that now?"

"As soon as possible. Is Kanda nearly done?"

"Just finishing."

Kanda killed the second akuma with a fluid series of blows before running back. As his footsteps approached, Marie tied a string to the current tree, then started to dart between the trees with an unexpected lightness of foot, attaching a network of seemingly infinite threads to the trunks and branches.

...

Daisya gave an airy wave as Kanda skidded to a halt. Kanda looked him up and down. If he was this lax he was either dangerous or planning something.

"Marie's just building us a little cage, so it looks like we'll have to do even _more_ fighting."

Despite the tone of mock complaint, Daisya's eyes had lit up with something Kanda had noticed on a couple of occasions.

He couldn't profess to feeling the same way.

About what…?

He cut himself off, and Daisya seemed to notice something behind him.

"Mind if I take this one?" he asked, staring fixedly at a point about two inches above Kanda's shoulder.

"Go ahead."

Kanda's voice was clipped, but it didn't hold any malice.

...

Daisya leapt back, nudged the Bell to the side, then took a run forwards, zigzagging to avoid getting hit. The akuma was still a couple hundred metres away. Before Kanda realized what he was doing, he crossed over, forming a right angle to his previous line of movement, and ran hard. He'd kicked the Bell straight through the akuma before it had a chance to turn.

He doubled back behind a group of spruces, and listened to the Bell do its work. It seemed to be working better as the fight wore on.

There was an odd sound, and he remembered to run back to Kanda.

"I can't believe you managed to make Innocence into a soccer ball," muttered Kanda as Daisya skidded to a halt beside him.

"Hey, I just do what I'm good at."

The glint of moonlight off of wire or the barest glimpse of a line was all that betrayed the web woven around them. Marie seemed to be covering quite an area while the akuma were finding them. The clearing wasn't so much a clearing as lighter forest, and it gradually faded into thicker trees over a few tens of metres. Marie was smarter than he hinted.

Daisya let his breathing catch up with him, while Kanda stood straight, watching for more akuma. The grey lines of tree trunks against the black of night made the clearing look like wallpaper, without the depth afforded by light. Grey and black and grey that hinted at green and black that hinted at brown but grey and black nonetheless. Monochrome, with the terrible harshness of iron or steel. This night was dead. Hopefully none of them would follow.

...

After a while, Marie reappeared. The exorcist was moving quickly and quietly, zigzagging seemingly at random through the maze of wire.

"They will be here soon. I will not be able to kill them, but I can make it easier for you two to do that. It'll be for the best," he said awkwardly. He was never that good at talking.

"Got it."

Kanda was silent, but he nodded.

Then they waited. Not for long.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a really clear mental image for this, but I can't really translate it into words without visuals. See for yourselves.

There was no end to the akuma. A few rounds of mental mathematics told Daisya that, if you had ten houses with ten akuma each, you could get a hundred. There were more than ten houses in the village, and you could fit more than ten akuma in each, when push came to shove. If it was definitely shove, they could have a couple hundred to take down tonight. You couldn't just defeat the akuma. You had to exterminate them.

Two thicker trees stood ten, fifteen metres apart, forming a sort of choke point. Marie had chosen it pretty well. On either side, thinner trees were clustered densely, with shrubs and bushes and Marie's strings weaving between them to form a sort of living wall, swaying with the breeze. On one side of the barrier was a mass of akuma that almost seemed to ripple in the moonlight, and on the other was a clearing strung with wire like a spider's web. The scooping shape and resonant wood functioned to amplify the noise, pushing it into the oncoming waves.

Kanda and Daisya had been holding this point for some time, and from the looks of it they'd have to stay here for a while longer. There was probably a Noah somewhere around here, to keep the akuma in line. They wouldn't have to worry about fighting if it found them. They'd be dead.

And even now they were dead tired, movements sluggish compared to the lighting speed of minutes ago. It was thanks to Marie's Organum that they held their own. As soon as the akuma heard the music, they went half-mad; like animals, frothing at the mouth. They didn't last long in the hurricane of bullets, bells, and blades.

...

Kanda ran in zigzags to avoid the bullets, crushing dry leaves underfoot. The akuma were pretty flimsy to Mugen, but he could only just keep up with Marie's help.

He leapt and feinted to the right, planted his left foot, and thrust one of the swords into the akuma. The things he liked to call calamities were already at work on the others, keeping them confused. How Daisya was managing, he couldn't guess. He seemed eerily happy, but he shouldn't have been _that_ good.

Mugen swung in an arc, unleashing another wave of calamities. Kanda followed them, ripping into the akuma with as much speed as he could muster. The clamour of bells and the strains of the strings rang in his ears, along with the hail of gunfire. For the moment he relied on instinct, his vision assaulted as much as his ears were with shreds and dust and falling leaves. He slashed wildly, keeping his position far in front of the choke point until all that remained in front of him were mounds of dust.

Still, something of fear dripped down the back of his neck as he paused amidst the wreckage.

He glanced over at Marie, whose hands were pressed together, adjusting the tightness of the wires ever so slightly to provide the intervals of agony.

He was fine.

Marie should always be fine.

He whipped back to the front, leaping to the side to throw off the akuma's aim. The bullets didn't have any permanent effect on him, but they still hurt.

_That's it._

The sword flashed again as he moved forward with the speed of a snake. His eyes flashed to the side as he doubled back behind the strings, catching his breath in the middle of the storm. Where was Daisya. He should have been just behind him...

 _There_.

Daisya's bell flew through the air, flashing even in the barest shreds of light.

But Daisya, who hitherto had been dancing in the heart of the lightning, did not fly with it.

Instead, he slouched against a tree trunk, panting. One of his legs was planted firmly on the ground, but the other just barely touched it.

Kanda turned his attention back to the front, but kept one eye on the side, trying to keep track of one dark figure in a two-dimensional staircase of black and grey. His eyes were only just working in this light.

Daisya slid back on to his feet when his bell flew back, and kicked clumsily it at the next clump of akuma gliding towards them.

It missed.

Kanda's thoughts were clear as he ran, muscles burning, towards the akuma.

Humans are naturally dominant in hands, eyes, and legs.

A right-handed person forced to use their left arm was practically useless.

Same with eyes and legs.

Kanda skidded on an outstretched leg to slow down, scattering the rubble of the forest floor, then planted his other foot to launch himself at the akuma.

Daisya said something, but he couldn't make it out.

The twin illusions sliced through its grotesque mask, but not before a bullet grazed his left arm.

A clump of bullets. In a fluid motion, the follow-through of the slash curved back around to cut away a chunk of flesh and fabric. It was easier for his body to heal this than that much of the virus.

Kanda landed heavily on the ground, his left arm momentarily useless without a section of its muscle.

He could take care of that.

As he turned back to face the akuma — now doubled, without Daisya's help, the Charity Bell rang out again, ricocheting off a tree on their right to pierce horizontally through a row of akuma.

Someone grabbed him by the collar, nearly choking him, and dragged him further back behind the wires.

...

Daisya had remembered, watching the approaching akuma, a mill.

The old man had dragged him all over the place, and England had been full of fabric mills, spinning out yards upon yards of fabric by the day. And in the mills, there was always a hum that emanated from the brickwork. Like some sort of primeval music, punctuated by the clacking of the looms. Daisya liked to try and hum the same note as the mills, and sometimes he got it.

But sometimes when he got the note right, the volume of the two sounds combined was more than just one loudness added to the other, to his ears. He'd asked the old man about that, and had gotten a long-winded explanation about 'interference' and 'waves' and a dozen other words he couldn't understand, or that were familiar but used in the wrong way. He'd ended up with the impression that waves fought each other, and when they were fighting and one hit you, that was one of the waves that would knock you into the sand. He still didn't get what that bit had to do with the sounds, but whatever.

The one thing he remembered was that two different versions of the same sound could combine better than any other two sounds, when they were in roughly the same place. Or sometimes when they were in different places, but that was a bit of a toss-up.

He'd tried to hum a note that was the same as Marie's when he felt his ankle give out. He'd gotten it, and heard the sound ringing in his ears.

He'd heard the leap in volume, and seen the akuma fall faster when more than one bell was ringing.

Now he heard different things as he half ran, half hopped a retreat. Someone yelling in his ear, to be specific. Not nice. He could taste blood in the back of his throat, and something a bit like worry on the backs of his teeth.

"Daisya, what the _hell_ are you doing? Let go _right now_."

"What, like you're going to kill them all now that you just tore a chunk out of your arm?!"

His voice was climbing up the pitches, as it did when he was excited. But the adrenaline in his veins was countered by one last vestige of logic, hence the flight through the trees, to the centre of Marie's nest.

"I'm fine, trust me! And why did you stop, anyway? Can't you even fight?"

"I'll be fine in five minutes, I just twisted my ankle. But then you had to go and cut off your own arm."

"I told you, I'm fine! I heal better than you."

Daisya didn't look back, but he heard the rage boiling in Kanda's voice.

"So then we can just start fighting once we get to Marie, okay? I've got a plan."

"Last time you had a plan you nearly killed yourself!"

"Yeah, well last time I had a plan, we both survived."

"You have to be the dumbest person I've ever _met_."

"That doesn't stop you from being an idiot with a martyr complex!"

Daisya's voice was nearly a whisper when they came to a halt in front of Marie. He was almost like a statue, arms crossed in the shadow of the forest.

"Hey–"

"I heard," said Marie, forestalling Daisya's explanation, "Kanda's right. His body is stronger than yours."

"Oh, yeah. But that's not what I was gonna say."

Daisya was now walking back and forth slowly, putting more pressure on his ankle. They still had a bit of time before the next wave hit them. Thirty seconds? A minute?

"So, you know how if you play two of the same note at the same time, they sound a whole lot louder if they're at the same place?"

"Yes. The principle of constructive interference."

Kanda was already shifting into a fighting stance, ready for the akuma to catch up. Daisya noticed that he'd dropped the double-wielding, though his wound was slowly healing over.

"Well, d'you think if you played your strings at the same note as my bell, it could work?"

"I don't know. Combining Innocences isn't something most people do."

Marie paused, and seemed to think for a moment. Daisya could see the akuma, tortured by the music but still moving, still moving closer. Marie's muscles were tightening unconsciously.

And Kanda still letting his left arm hang at his side.

"But we haven't even killed half of them–"

There was a sharp intake of breath, and Marie shifted some notes up a tritone, trying to keep the akuma at bay. The moon above them wasn't normal. You notice the weirdest things in the middle of a fight. Like the fact that it was a nice, dark rusty red. The colour of dried blood.

An akuma approached Kanda, and Daisya kicked the Charity Bell at it, breathing hard as his strained tendons protested.

The bell pierced it, and rang, but the akuma didn't slow down.

Kanda's Calamities swarmed it, and Kanda himself ran to slash into it. It was almost at the choke point, moving with the finality of a glacier.

And Daisya saw that it was different. Not a painted face on a mess of tubes, but a grotesquerie of metal.

Kanda threw himself sideways, rolling and barely dodging a serrated paw — it couldn't be called a hand.

The Charity Bell flew back, and another akuma appeared, then another. The army had finally amassed.

All the while, the strings were screaming. Marie must have cranked it up hard, because now the trees around them clawed up at the sky like teeth or withered bones. It felt like a choke-hold.

Daisya put all his willpower into his twisted ankle, and balanced on one foot.

_Almost, almost..._

A bullet short through his hood as he kicked the ball through the files upon files of monstrosities.

" _Marie! NOW!_ "

The volume, already seemingly at a high, doubled as an impossible chord howled into the night.

The bells tolled in resonance, and Marie dropped to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears.

But Daisya stayed upright, willing every last ounce of energy into synchronization, feeling the peals of noise resonate in his chest. It was as if the Innocence was beating in time with his heart, not just keeping him from death but making him _alive_...

Around Kanda, the akuma fell like lotus petals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always time to apply physics principles. Namely, if two waves of the same frequency overlap in a certain way, the amplitude of the resulting wave will be equal to the sum of the amplitudes of the two waves. In other words, it's gonna get a lot louder.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was born out of a) a pun and b) embarrassment at not having a firm grip on characters that are not Kanda or Daisya, so it might be a bit odd. Anyhow, please read and review. It ain't gonna get any better if my narcissistic self is my only source of criticism.

The blood-red moon circled overhead, flashing across the sky at an impossibly quick pace. Sometimes it felt as if the sky had broken into shards reflecting the light, sometimes it looked like a maelstrom had begin to spin with the moon as its eye.

As time went on, the images coalesced. The clouds appeared and shifted, stony and jagged and yet swirling, stirred by the lightning. Somehow, the moon was beneath them, staring down at him like some bloodshot eye.

There was never any sun.

And yet, against all logic, the red glow illuminated a thin copse of trees in perfect detail.

"You really shouldn't have brought them out here, you know?"

The apparition perched in the fork of one of the sturdier trees, swinging its legs back and forth. Tiedoll knew what it was. An ages-old, superhuman creature, hellbent on the destruction of mankind.

In one hand, it gestured vaguely with an umbrella, which squeaked in protest.

"Poor Kanda."

He could feel his chest convulse, as if his body was desperately trying to keep him breathing.

"He's fighting _so_ hard this time around."

The apparition pouted, with the face of a preteen denied a later bedtime.

In front of Tiedoll, Kanda — no, just an _image_ of Kanda, no matter how realistic — was panting, stars beginning to form on his skin. Beside him, Marie sat slumped, playing his Innocence with five fingers split between both hands.

The forest around them was full of splintered trunks and fallen bullets. Daisya was already a deflated cloak and a bell sitting atop a pile of dust.

" _Help me!_ "

The image still standing screamed the words with a vehemence as his fingers started to crumble.

A few seconds later, the images in front of him were only those of akuma and dust.

"Shall we try again?"

The apparition swung the umbrella around again, and the moon spun.

Tiedoll said nothing, allowing his fists to clench just enough for the change to be perceptible, then bowing his head, as if in agony. This was the Noah of dreams. The girl sitting in the tree was her form, but she would never present so obvious a target if she didn't expect him to go for it.

No, someone, something else here was the one he had to kill.

The images flashed into being again. This time it was just Kanda and Daisya and what could have been a body, could have been a corpse. He'd seen this tens of times before, if not hundreds.

A bullet caught Daisya in the shin. A spray of blood blocked his vision as Mugen sliced through flesh and bone, and Daisya screamed. Now he was crumpled up, with the shattered stump of a tibia instead of a foot.

"O-old man..."

Daisya held his gaze for a moment, looking like a lost child for the moment before his expression changed.

" _Why didn't you help us?_ "

The last thing he saw before Daisya crumpled to dust was a mask of hatred. Kanda didn't even bother to look at him before he fell. Marie gained consciousness just in time to see it.

The _image_ of Kanda. The illusion. Nothing more. He wished he felt nothing more.

Until he figured out where the Noah was hiding, he couldn't make a move. She would keep him in these visions so long as he seemed affected.

That was easy. It was remaining unaffected that was difficult.

The moon rose beneath the sky, and circled again. Lightning, in jagged handwriting, spelled a name he could not read. The sun remained a shadow.

The scenes were different, lit in grey and red like the edge of exhaustion, but the dramatis personae remained constant in their deaths.

Marie was last again, this time. Unlike the other two, he cast no accusations. In fact, the sound that echoed in Tiedoll's ear was a weary chuckle. As if the end he expected had finally come.

His heart hammered a tattoo on the inside of his ribs. There was no time. He had to get out of here quickly. But who was she? Who _was_ she?

Dead.

Daisya always died first. He rushed in, took a bullet (sometimes for someone, he recalled uneasily), and promptly turned to dust. Marie would let his guard drop for a moment, visibly dismayed, then have to somehow sever the flesh and bone infected by the bullets that hit him.

Kanda would remain standing until the end, even as his healing ran out and stars crawled ever so slowly along him. Whether he or Marie died first, it didn't matter. He was the last one standing.

Most times Daisya would be long gone by the time Marie bled out, and Kanda would collapse soon after.

But, every time, he looked up and screamed for help. Kanda, who would never do such a thing.

That was deliberate.

The moon flashed overhead.

Who was it? The apparition, whose form was the Noah, would not be the Noah. He'd already thought it was too obvious. It wouldn't be the akuma, because that would be too boring. This one wasn't sent to kill him — she was playing.

So one of the three images remaining was a real being.

But which one? She would take the one he wouldn't guess. But how would she know? If he could figure out which one he could guess, he could choose the one he wouldn't. But then he would have guessed it.

It was a conundrum. An enigma.

She would see how he felt about each of the three in detail free of self-delusion. And if he were to take the quick way out, he would have to do the same.

He was unwilling to try and choose favourites at any time, let alone a time like this. And if she found he had one, then would she even choose that one? Or have it not be them, and make the others turn to him in resentment.

It was the parent's nightmare, he thought with a sense of grim humour. She would have known it — it would produce the most difficult obstacle, and thus the most amusing result.

He let himself drop, feeling a bitter condensation in his eyes. It wasn't hard to do.

"Please-"

It was half whine, half sob. The most pathetic sound he could formulate.

"Why are you doing this?"

The apparition stopped twirling the umbrella, which sighed gratefully.

"Hmm. Why am I doing this, you ask?"

It paused.

"I guess now's the time I give you all the juicy details of my mission," it said, drawing out the last word. He supposed he should keep calling it 'she', but it was an apparition. 'She' would be one of the images in front of him. But they were her words.

"Too bad for you, I don't have much time for that yet. So how about you just get to deciding which one of these is real, hey? Just pick your favourite," it — she — said, smiling pleasantly.

The image that looked so like Daisya cried bitter tears as it crumbled. There were almost cliches in the series of scenes and storylines.

Who was it?

He had already decided why each of them could be the image, but which theory held true?

Daisya was the innocent. To kill him would be a crime beyond all comprehension. That was because he wouldn't mind too much.

And there was little that spoke more to the unfairness of the world than a child who already found so little in life to love that an adrenaline-filled death was preferable to a continued life without it.

So killing Daisya would be like killing a mangled flower with the misfortune to be in the middle of a highway. He would die anyway. Probably soon.

But his death would be a testament to the cruelty of fate. He was born to die young.

Kanda…

Kanda would die in despair, not joy. Well, maybe a perverse satisfaction at it all being over.

Kanda was an anomaly, in every way. He had heard little of what had happened before, but that had been enough. Just enough.

Killing Kanda would make sense.

But he could never do it. Kanda was a child. Kanda was his child. And Kanda was still searching.

He could never kill him, because his eyes would always resemble the ones stained with tears one night. One night out of hundreds.

And only ever once.

Marie would not want to die. Marie would accept death. He had expected it when Tiedoll had found him.

Marie would die as any person would, with a measure of regret and fear. Kanda and Daisya were fairly simple. Kanda searched, and saved. There was nothing else that mattered to him. Daisya's sole goal was to be amused.

Marie was normal; Marie was complicated. His motivations, his personality would not have any effect on his death. He could take care of himself. He did take care of himself. He was quiet, he obeyed orders, and he was kind. Marie, forever and always the ideal student, the ideal son. Not like the prodigals, whose graves were littered with the shreds of sketches.

Marie was the one person besides him who could coax Kanda into some semblance of humanity.

Killing him would be a pity. He shouldn't die, because he was better than so many and so much and he was the last living child. He never asked for anything.

He had never asked for anything.

The apparition whistled a tune.

Even when blood was pooling about its feet, the image still played the strings. It clung to the fight. Only — only so long as there was something left to fight for.

The Noah knew him too well.

He had asked for nothing.

Tiedoll got up, and made his pace a stagger, heading towards the three images.

He had asked for nothing, and he had been given it.

A wave of guilt washed over him, strong enough to make him gag, and he brought his Innocence down between the eyes that looked at him as they had for years, with neither expectation nor excitement but a sort of disbelieving contentment.

The Noah screamed.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiedoll is called different names based on point of view, Kanda is emotionally constipated, for all his being annoying Daisya bears a bit of a resemblance to someone else we know, and everyone's forgotten to tell Daisya something important. Not much new, but readings and reviews always enjoyed, so long as you liked the chapter. If not, well, hopefully the next one will be better.

Kanda staggered along towards the western road. Had he the energy or an audience, he would have given a litany of complaint.

He stopped momentarily, and adjusted his grip around Daisya's chest. The sight would have been worthy of laughter in another context. An eleven-year-old child, with a heavily-built adult over his shoulders in a fireman's lift, and an arm wrapped around the ribs of another child, walking slowly under the weight.

Whatever Marie and Daisya had pulled off, they'd knocked themselves out pretty good. Them and any akuma in a kilometer-wide radius. He was still a bit fuzzy on the language of sync rates and energy drain that Komui and the scientists liked, but it seemed like the two of them together had tapped into some hidden reserve. Like those stories about people lifting carts and boulders in fits of panic. Apparently it was impressive. From his perspective, there wasn't anything special about being able to do that. Bragging about it was just stupid. But Tiedoll kept saying that he had to remember that not everyone was like him. Most people didn't think it was possible.

He stopped for a moment, sucking a few breaths in and out. Yeah, he was strong, but it had been a long night. It was being a long night. Probably. The clouds around the horizon would have choked out any sign of light even if it was day.

Anyway, something about doing that made Marie and Daisya sleepy. He'd heard that sync rates meant that you and your Innocence were working as the same thing, as two wills in harmony, but that didn't make sense. He hated having some parasitic _thing_ getting into his mind, making him a puppet of some bastard God, but his sync rates were as good as anyone's. He was strong.

But Lenalee was strong, too, and her sync rates swung up and down like her moods. Some days they didn't allow her to go train. Said she could fall and break something. Kanda knew better.

He knew Marie was pretty good. Wasn't too strong, but made up for it. And Daisya...he was a loud, annoying, sloppy brat, but he made it work. If they weren't strong, didn't have high sync rates, what did they do that made everything drop dead? Not any of that _teamwork_ crap that the French girl kept spouting. Teamwork just slowed you down, got you killed. Something about the Innocences worked together. Something about the music. He didn't remember much, but it was like the strings and the bell were just little ripples that all of a sudden were one damn big wave heading right at you.

He'd heard about the ocean. He'd seen it. He'd watched the people swimming, bobbing in and out of the water with the waves. He couldn't imagine being able to do that, just floating there without feeling something dragging you down and trying to get back to the surface and _not_ —

He hated water. It was like he was watching all over again, as he got dragged down and down and down. That's what it felt like. A wave of Innocence that knocked down and engulfed everything. He'd felt it in his lungs, pouring in through every orifice, throbbing as the waves ebbed and flowed.

The water...he remembered some of the kids would wait until the waves came in, and ride them. They could make it from fifteen feet out to the beach with one little jump. And when two waves ran into each other, the wave that came out would be bigger. Maybe the music was like a wave, and the two musics together made a sort of jump, or spring. Like the mousetraps they had at headquarters. The music was in sync, and the sync rates did the same thing, getting bigger and bigger together. And the strength, too. If they were both unconscious, then the Innocence could take over. The two Innocences would overlap to create something big enough to swamp the forest.

But that was wrong. These sorts of things never made sense.

Even if he wasn't wrong, it all sounded pretty stupid to hi—

Distracted, his left foot planted itself in a puddle, and slid out from under him. He just managed to catch himself on his forearms. After dropping Daisya, of course.

—m. Damn. He could carry Marie fine, but one more put him off balance. Why'd he have to carry Daisya? Why was Daisya even here in the first place? All he'd done was get himself beat up doing stupid things.

He pulled himself back to his feet, wiping his boot on the grass that edged the dirt road, and picked Daisya up again. It took his eyes a moment to refocus on the road ahead, leading into the village and then off into the horizon, dusty and brown, filled with ruts. The grass framed it almost like a windowpane.

The window.

Daisya wasn't like him. Stupid bastard tried to get hurt every time he could by playing the hero. He could have saved himself from the fire. He'd be healed up by now. He didn't need to get dragged to safety. He wasn't the one who couldn't deal with a broken bloody ankle. Daisya was the one who didn't heal, so why didn't he...

Why didn't he just jump?

The window. He remembered staring out. He'd seen Alma, covered in scars and marks, with two curving down from his eyes like tears.

Why'd he have to stay behind? Why'd he have to pull that stupid stunt and get his skin so burnt and charred that he couldn't even feel how bad it was?

If Daisya'd been there a few minutes longer he'd have died. He could have survived longer. He would have healed, but not Daisya. Daisya wasn't like him.

Daisya wasn't like him.

And here, here and now, he'd been a centimetre away from getting shot just to play the damn hero.

Why had Daisya tried to save him?

_Fuck_

Kanda's breath was getting heavier again, catching in places. It had been a long week.

_Why did people always have to save him?_

For a minute or two, he was glad no one was awake to see him.

...

Tiedoll ran out of the village at break-neck speed. He'd taken care of the Noah and her akuma for now — at least, he doubted she was going to want to show up any time soon — but it would be a while before the akuma drifted away. If Marie and the children hadn't exterminated theirs...well, first of all they could be dead, and second of all it would only be a matter of time before the akuma found him or someone less prepared.

But that wasn't a good way to think. They had exterminated the akuma, that was what was true. They had to have. All that was left was to find out how, and where they were now.

He ran beneath a multicoloured stretch of canvas awnings and past a row of shabby shops — a bakery, a post office, a butcher — and didn't think about the little, cyclical lives of the former inhabitants of the village. About the innkeeper and her sister, or the cats that now weren't fed, or the birthday cake slowly moulding over in the oven. He had learned not to dwell on it; far better to think of the task at hand. Heroes, full of compassion and sorrow — they didn't save anyone. They merely died tragic deaths. Exorcists did. Their objective was not to save, but nonetheless — he liked to think they could.

Now, where were his apprentices?

...

The farm road met up with the highway through town about a hundred metres from the first building. Another copse of trees was clustered at the side of the road, and in the centre of the crossroads a signpost pointed every which way. The letters were familiar, but the language looked like someone had taken a pepper grinder to it. Too many dots and lines. Kanda could make them out in the night, but now the sky above the clouds was lightening just enough for a normal person to make out the shapes.

Later, Kanda would again be suspicious of the Hungarian language, when an older, marginally more mature, and conscious Daisya tried to convince him to learn it. For now, though Daisya was asleep, and Kanda's mind was marinating too much in bitterness to care.

Kanda let out a breath when he saw the General, and let Daisya drop to the ground. He set Marie down a bit more softly.

"What happened?" the General asked, who had dropped to his knees, already fussing over the unconscious pair.

"There were akuma. We killed them. I don't know what happened next, but I think _he_ —"

Kanda nudged Daisya with a foot. The General was checking his pulse with a quick press of fingers to his wrist.

"—did something stupid."

The General sat back on his heels, having assured himself that Marie and Daisya weren't going anywhere any time soon.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You mean you didn't hear it?"

Behind the suspicion, there was a note of genuine confusion in Kanda's voice.

"No. I, uh, had a little run-in. Which reminds me, we should probably get out of here are quickly as possible."

"Whatever."

Kanda rolled his eyes, but his heart wasn't in it. He was too tired to care at the moment. No, that wasn't right. Too pissed off, that was it.

"If that's true, I'll make Daisya tell you about it later."

Kanda knelt down beside Marie, and gently lifted him back up.

"You can take _him_."

With that, Kanda turned and started walking again.

...

He seemed off balance again, like after the fire. He was just a bit too tired-looking. Too...not sad, not angry, just wishing he was somewhere else. Or maybe that Daisya was somewhere else. You couldn't blame him.

He'd been acting strangely towards Daisya for a while. Maybe the paper-pushers had been right, about them working together. Or maybe just terribly, terribly wrong.

Tiedoll followed him, carrying his own burden.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter feat. the penny finally dropping for Daisya. You might wonder if I ever regret the things I do to this kid, such as covering him in a combination of burns ranging from first to third degree and making him draw on the emergency strength native to most humans (it allows for those stories of people lifting cars and boulders to save themselves or others), but frankly it's quite enjoyable.

When Daisya opened his eyes, he could barely breathe.

Not because of any damage to his lungs or anything, but because even the smallest movements sent the melody of pain into trills above an ostinado of burning aches. Every cell of his body was cashing in to repay the line of credit it had taken out the night before. Aaargh, and he felt like he was going to be sick.

Had he taken any painkillers last night? Maybe, but that was probably way too long ago. He'd been shovelling them in every couple hours these past few days.

Instead of moving, he examined the ceiling. There was a shadow on the edge of his vision that he dismissed, and the central view was taken up by a rough wooden surface. A few low cross-beams indicated that he was in an attic, somewhere. There was dust on the wood, even up there. It was probably pretty thick on the tops of the beams. No one had used this place for a while.

Above the pain, he could feel the weight of the sheets over him. They were rough, probably off-white from age, and tucked in tightly. This room was probably an old bedroom in a house that hadn't had enough people in it. There was the same draining sense, as if the room was trying to lap up every bit of life that wandered in, to have the sense of being lived-in again. Maybe some grandfather's or spinster's attic. There was a bit of a shadow in the corner of his right eye. A bedside table, probably, enough for a glass of water and a kerosene lamp. Not too fancy.

The mattress wasn't that comfortable, either. Better than the floor, though. Wasn't on fire, either.

Speaking of which, how had he ended up here in the first place? Lessee, they'd been travelling to the village. The kid said that the circus was travelling around here. Pity they never got to see it. He'd played with Kanda a bit, then they had to fight. There were trees. It was dark. The moon was red.

That wasn't it.

The last thing he remembered was…

…Marie, gasping on the ground. The shrieking noise that tore the akuma to pieces was taking its toll on him.

And Kanda, unaffected and looking almost…calm, staring at the akuma falling in shreds around him.

And then he looked at Daisya.

Daisya's reflexes kicked in, and he sat up. Bad, bad idea. He hissed in a stuttering breath, and let it fall out no less jerkily. Every square centimetre of his skin protested the movement.

Yes, the sheets were off-white. And old. The bed was pretty basic, made of wood. Where was Marie? What had happened? Where was Kanda?

The last thing he remembered was Marie…

No, the last thing he remembered was Kanda. Not anything about him, just a sense. Something to do with Kanda.

He looked sideways, to where the shadow had been in his peripheral vision. It was only then that his mind properly woke up.

…

Kanda was still there, sitting on a wooden chair beside the bed and staring at him without a trace of emotion. Not exasperation, not anger. The only indication of his thoughts were his arms and legs, both crossed defensively.

Daisya looked away, almost in shame. Kanda didn't look too angry, which should have been good, 'cause he'd probably think the stunt he'd pulled was stupid. But somehow it was…wrong.

Something landed in his lap. A glass vial, with a handful of tablets. Good old Tiedoll. The old man was pretty useful, sometimes.

"Don't take more than two."

Kanda got up, walking towards the door. Soon, his light footsteps had disappeared down the stairs.

He was alone again, for better or for worse. Though why Kanda was waiting here just to give him some meds was beyond him. Just leaving them on the bedside table would have been enough.

Daisya inspected the contents of the bottle, and poured three of the tablets into the palm of his hand. Looking around for a glass of water, or something liquid, he spotted a glass on the table and washed the medicine down with its contents. Yep, it was probably water.

He imagined the euphoric feeling of the pain fading — or even better, of the pain ceasing to exist. Those painkillers sure tasted good.

A set of less elegant footsteps came up the stairs, and the old man appeared in the doorway. The lines on his face were a bit more pronounced, making him seem older than normal. He had some killer dark circles, too.

"Ah, I see you're awake. You were quite enjoying your sleep for some time."

Daisya shrugged gingerly, eyes following Tiedoll as he made his way across the room. You didn't notice it the first time around, but he had a way of walking that made it look like he wasn't moving purposefully at all, just drifting.

"Hah, yeah. Don't even know how I managed to knock myself out. It's pretty boring, when you don't even dream."

The old man sat down in Kanda's chair, looking thoughtful.

Recollection waved its timid cue card a few seconds late.

"Oh, yeah, did Marie tell you what we did? It was pretty badass, I gotta say."

He grinned hopefully.

"Yes, I suppose it was. Combining Innocence is difficult, so I'm surprised you managed it. It pushed your synch rates up too high, though, which knocked the two of you out. Kanda had to carry y—"

"Wait— _Kanda_ carried us?" interrupted Daisya, eyebrows raised, "Yeah, right. How strong is that kid?"

Tiedoll looked confused for a moment. Then, an expression crossed his face that would be similar to that on the face of someone halfway to work who remembered they'd forgotten to turn off the oven.

"Remind me again: did I tell you anything about Kanda's special abilities?"

Daisya made a face, and shrugged emphatically.

"Dunno if he has any. I mean, he sliced up his arm and he sounded okay, so maybe he can heal…?"

Tiedoll paused as the suggestion trailed off, then nodded.

"Yes, that is correct. He is able to heal at a remarkable rate, and he also is far stronger than most human beings. He can carry you and Marie far more easily than I could. I'm sorry about not telling you sooner, but, as you know, things were a bit rushed."

Tiedoll finished the sentence in a hurry, and looked sheepishly to Daisya, who was staring at him.

He had been prepared for Daisya to be upset about not being told. However, he had not been prepared for Daisya to burst out laughing. Not giggling either, but loud, raucous laughter.

"Oh, now that's great. So Kanda can heal, can he?" Daisya asked, once he'd gotten his breath back, "Oh, I'm definitely a moron."

The General let his apprentice ramble on a bit in the pink clouds of seratonin and morphine.

"Y'see, I had to drag him off when we were fighting, and he got really pissed off, because he didn't even need saving in the first place!"

Another bout of laughter was forestalled as Tiedoll put a hand on his apprentice's shoulder to wake him up.

"Daisya, you should probably have some breakfast. You've been out for quite a while."

"Okay," answered Daisya with a resentful sort of energy, "It's going to be porridge, isn't it? I hate porridge."


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just say that Daisya is having one of /those/ days. Not that he had good judgment in the first place, but today's a special case. After all, opiates do have a rather intoxicating effect along with being good painkillers.

Daisya stared into his bowl, sighed, and dug a spoon in. It shifted a bit under his scrutiny. Porridge was always suspicious-looking. This stuff was mushy and thick, and you could see it spiraling if you tilted your head the right way. And it was the same suspicious grey-brown as the worn table. Oh, well. He wasn't going to heal too quickly if he didn't eat anything.

As he reluctantly shoveled down the oatmeal, Kanda glared, and Marie and the old man were talking. Something about some 'no-ah' or something.

His mind wandered, wondering where they were. Some inn, maybe, but it looked like it was just the four of them there. And it was way too small. There was a pot-bellied stove in the corner, with a small pot and a kettle. Probably some old abandoned house. Just the stove, this table and chairs here, and a pile of wood in the corner. Four chairs at the table, two off to the side a bit. The attic was the spare bedroom, probably, because there was an opening to another adjacent room. Maybe it was one of the houses that the akuma were living in, or a farm cottage near there. The akuma'd probably taken over a ten-kilometre radius, Marie said. That was a long distance.

He pitied the circus they said was coming to the now-empty village. At least they weren't going to wander in and die, or anything.

Whoever this Noah group or bunch of things or whatever was seemed pretty serious. Marie looked a bit nervous, and even the old man seemed tired. He looked like a raccoon, between those terrible thick glasses with the taped-up bridge and what looked like bruises under his eyes. Maybe he'd got those ugly things to hide the dark circles. They broke way too easily, anyway.

As he stared off absentmindedly into the distance, a glob of porridge slid off his spoon and on to the hem of his tunic.

Whatever, he thought. I can just wash it.

With that, he went face first into the bowl

...

After Marie had pulled him up and given him a gentle duck in the water barrel outside, Daisya was most definitely more awake. In fact, his muscles had moved without any thought being involved, which resulted in his current situation of balancing on the edges of the barrel. Actually, he didn't know how he'd managed to jump about four feet straight up. It was only a miracle he hadn't hit his head on the window-alcove-thing that jutted out from the side of the cottage.

"Whoa, what was _that_ for?" he whined, wheeling an arm back to rebalance himself. Good thing he was wearing thick socks, otherwise he'd be walking on splinters.

"To wake you up. I'm sorry about that, but I find it is the most efficient way."

"But it's _freezing_ —" Daisya started, then broke off. Marie was acting way too sensible, like he always did, but he looked like he was hiding a grin more than just smiling a bit. "You messing with me?"

Marie's grin made its way out into the open. "Not really. But you do look a bit funny up there."

He walked around to the side of the barrel, and held out an arm to help Daisya down.

"You should finish your breakfast. I have heard it's the most important meal of the day."

Daisya made a face, and braced himself off of Marie's hand before hopping down. Things still hurt a bit, even after the drugs. Strike that. Things still hurt a lot.

"You serious? What about dessert?"

...

Kanda had excused himself to tidy up a bit the moment he saw Daisya, which meant that the rest of the breakfast passed in peace. The old man was really in sketching the layout of the room, and describing it to Marie at the same time. Daisya hadn't really thought about it, but he guessed Marie only had a rough idea of what was where no matter where he went. It was a wonder he could navigate. He made a note to ask about it later. His hearing couldn't do everything, now, could it?

Anyhow, Kanda was probably off somewhere sulking or folding socks, which meant that he wasn't going to be paying that much attention. Or, even better, he might be combing that hair of his.

...

"Give. It. Back."

"Ow, yeah, yeah, okay, just — _aaaaagh!_ "

Kanda twisted Daisya's collar, keeping his feet a few centimetres from the ground. He _had_ been brushing his hair, using the window as a mirror. Just enough to see your reflection in, if you were concentrating, but not enough to make you notice someone else's reflection. Or to get a good view of the chair in the corner opposite the window that had a basin of water, a bit of soap, a toothbrush, and most importantly a hair tie laid out on it.

"Come on, I'll give it back if you let me down. Please?"

Kanda let Daisya drop, feet hitting the floor hard, and held out a hand expectantly. It took a few steps for him to regain balance, but he was muttering complaints and rubbing at his throat in a couple of seconds.

Daisya reluctantly surrendered the piece of string, and Kanda took it without a word.

"So," asked Daisya awkwardly, "You're pretty strong, aren't you?"

Kanda finished tying a knot in the hair tie, and ran a hand through his short ponytail. There was a smattering of a brighter hue around his cheekbones. Looks like even Kanda could get flushed from chasing after him. All those afternoons of football practice didn't go to waste.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he muttered, still glaring daggers. Actually, he was probably glaring swords. Daisya forgot what the word was.

"Well, the old man said you carried Marie and me when we got knocked out. And you took a chunk out of your arm, but you look fine now, and it's going to be weeks before I get better," he reasoned, noting the empty fury on Kanda's face, "So, yeah. You're not like me or Marie. Or most people."

"I'm not like anyone," Kanda snapped, tightening his grip.

The look in his eyes had run dull again. Daisya noticed them, the same as after the fire, and behind the shutters. He was remembering something from some other time, some other place. Maybe some other world. He'd calculated the remark to try and get some information out of him, but it looked like Kanda was shutting down again.

Kanda obviously wasn't going to give him any more information. He'd just have to work with what he'd got.

He thought for a moment.

"What are _you_ looking at?"

Contempt dripped off of Kanda's every syllable. He did recover quickly, in more ways than one. He'd almost been angry enough to snap Daisya's neck. Not at him, but at something else. It was like he was staring at a point two inches behind Daisya's eyes. Something not there.

"I think I figured out why you hate me."

Daisya's hands were at his sides, displaying defenselessness despite the fingers at his throat. It was like dealing with a shy dog, the one that the kids two doors down had gotten off some merchant. You had to make sure it had no reason to bite you.

Kanda didn't give the courtesy of a reply.

"I got all burnt up in the fire, and you were sleeping, so it ended up with me saving you, even though you would have been fine," Daisya continued, almost accusingly.

Kanda remained silent. That wasn't it, but he was close. Close enough.

"Am I right? You've _really_ got a hero complex–"

" _Shut up_."

Kanda stared straight at Daisya. There was nothing behind his eyes.

"You're wrong."

The words were quiet, but full of venom. Kanda turned away.

Alma. Kanda. Other world. Shut down. Fire. Fall. Shutters. Weakness. Strength. Anger. _Hate_. But something more...

Daisya decided it was time to push his luck.

"Then it's because of Alma, right?"

...

He couldn't quite recall the movement, but in the course of a few seconds, Kanda had knocked him across the room, and was holding him against the wall. He could feel him trembling.

"Who told you about Alma?"

Kanda's voice was low, and guttural, and Daisya's held breath was running out. Damn damn damn damn God be _damned_ that wasn't a smart idea.

"Y-you said it when you were sleeping," he choked out, "I figured you were having a dream, or something. I c-couldn't wake you up."

The grip released. He dropped to the floor, and put a hand around his throat. _Shit_. Tears were leaking out of his eyes — Kanda's hold had grated on his burns.

"You act like Alma, sometimes," a voice said tersely. "Except you're worse."

Kanda had turned around, and left a handful of footsteps between them.

"Who was Alma?" Daisya asked, his voice rough.

"Alma was a bastard. Tried to kill me. Pushed me off a cliff."

There was something thick in Kanda's voice as he walked away. This Alma must have shaken him up. Maybe he was a teacher. Sibling. Parent. Someone you could never forgive or even try to forget.

Even if his voice was fine, Daisya couldn't have spoken in that moment.

"That's all you're ever going to know. Consider yourself lucky."

Daisya could barely hear the last words, but something in them made him get to his feet, and run after Kanda.

He'd spoken that way, once. To himself. Just before stabbing himself with the needle, trying to change something, anything, and tattooing a pair of amateur tears down his cheeks. Trying to escape. Not that badly, not in that harsh a whisper, but with the same wish to somehow erase the words he was saying as he said them. Tiedoll said that when you wanted to change something you couldn't change, you changed the things you could. It explained a lot of the stupid shit he'd done.

There was the pounding of footsteps on a wooden floor.

...

Kanda was slouched outside, against the wall of the inn. The sun beat down on the wooden boards of the house, reflecting slightly off the packed dirt and scrub of the compound. Maybe this was a garden, upon a time, before the plants took all the richness out of the soil, and just left sharp stubs of grass. Still, it was getting to be autumn, and a breeze took the edge off of whatever sun-baked monotony might have otherwise been there.

Daisya tossed the ball up and down as a token gesture, then, against his better judgment, sat next to him.

Kanda didn't even bother to look at him.

"Want to play some football?"

Kanda stared straight ahead, as if Daisya wasn't there.

"It's pretty nice weather, not all boring and hot."

Again, silence. Daisya felt his heart rate start to increase. He was ready to run at a moment's notice, in case Kanda tried his strangling trick again. The best thing, in this sort of situation, was to pretend that nothing was happening. Just ignore reality. That's what he'd done right up until five minutes ago, and look how that'd turned out for him.

"Come on, it's just a game. And I'm still healing, so you might be able to beat me, if you try hard."

Kanda raised a hand, and rapped the wall of the house once. Twice.

Daisya had to hide a smile, as his heart rate went up again. He may have been fun to to prank, but Kanda was pretty scary when he acted weird like this. By weird he meant nice. Well, not actually nice, but not actively taking a swing at him.

"Okay. Your loss, sucker."

Daisya took a breath, leaned over, and planted a kiss on Kanda's cheek.

" _Hey!_ "

But Daisya was prepared, and dodged the punch easily, and the kick, and the heel-strike, before running away fast enough to stay just ahead of Kanda.

Laughter and swearing echoed in the dusty yard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For clarification (even though this chapter's still probably a bit off):  
> -Daisya physically resembles Alma (weird eye markings, stocky build), and acts like him sometimes (loud, energetic), particularly when it comes to pushing Kanda off of things.   
> -Kanda is an emotionally unstable 11-year-old still recovering from one really traumatic unfortunate incident.   
> -From a few chapters ago, one knock means yes, and two knocks mean no.   
> -Daisya just can't not wave the proverbial red flag in front of the proverbial bull. That said, his last act of stupidity is actually semi-sensible, as it's severe enough to distract Kanda without provoking him to the same level as he just did.  
> -It takes a certain type of cleverness to do something that stupid.  
> -No, Marie can't see Daisya, but Daisya's pretty oblivious and Marie likes to very passively mess with him.  
> -Rereading some of this story, the whole thing is badly in need of editing, but I'll let that wait until I've finished it  
> -Large amounts of thanks to Iva_Kovacic and 420homura420 for commenting on here and feeding my overinflated ego


End file.
